Currently Reading

I have a feeling that my reading will become a little more convoluted in a bit when I have a couple of reviewer copies coming in, and with a couple of books on the docket right at the moment, with some others in the queue, I need to get my head straight.

Battle: The Story of the Bulge, by John Toland

This is a definitive history of the Battle of the Bulge, one that I'm reading and referencing for the Battle of the Bulge project that I've been working on. I've also read through Gen. (RET) Ernest Harmon's Combat Commander and John Eisenhower's The Bitter Woods, which is yielding a lot of really good, detailed information on the strategic nature of the battle, but also some of the tactical elements as well. It's helping me fill in a number of blanks with some of the units that I'm currently researching. Toland's book is detailed, readable and very interesting.

Blackout, by Connie Willis

This is a book that I've had my eye on for a little while, and I bumped it up the list after trying - and failing - to get through Catherynne Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed. Keeping with the World War II theme, this story follows a couple of 2060 Oxford history students who have been going back in time to study various points. Things are starting to heat up a bit, and the book is moving along nicely. I can't wait to get further through it.

Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes

This is lauded as one of the best books to come out about Vietnam ever. I met (and got to talk with) Mr. Marlantes when he was presented the Colby Award for the novel - it's awarded to an outstanding first work dealing with military matters, and it joins a prestigious group of books. It's based loosely on his experiences in Vietnam, and while it's a big book, I'm taking my time with this one, taking in the language and the story. It's quite something so far.

Welcome To The Greenhouse: New Science Fiction On Climate Change, edited by Gordon Van Gelder

This book is one that caught my eye and I'm set to review it once I finish it. It covers what I'm predicting will be the next wave or dominant theme of science fiction: global warming (along the same lines that the Cold War dominated science fiction) and while some of the stories here haven't been that great, there have been some outstanding ones. I think thus far, the anthology succeeds when the stories are well grounded in reality, and I hope that the stories coming up are like that.

Coming up after this batch of books are a couple of new books that came in yesterday: Catherynne Valente's Deathless and John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation, along with Jack Campbell’s latest addition, Dreadnaught, in his Lost Fleet series, as well as Spectyr, by Philippa Ballantine, all slated for reviews over the next month or so. Along with those, there are a couple of other books that I want to tackle after that: Ian M. Bank's Use of Weapons is one that's high up on the list, as well as William Gibson's Spook Country (and eventually, Zero History), as well as N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Kingdom. China Mieville's upcoming novel, Embassytown, is also high up there, with a number of good reviews already.

There's also a couple of non-fiction books that I'd like to get to. I need to get through to Footprints in the Dust, edited by Colin Burgess, about the Apollo 12-17 missions back in the 1970s, part of the Outward Odyssey series. I've fallen off that bandwagon for a little while as I read Ambassadors from Earth, and was put off by the horrid text, but this one looks like it'll interest me a bit more. I've picked up a couple of other books as well: John Keegan's First World War (A war I know precious little about), Thucydides, about the study of history and the upcoming Falling to Earth, by Francis French, about astronaut Al Worden.

There's a lot more beyond that, but it's a start.

Pirates + Lasers

The US Navy announced the other day that they used a HEL (high energy laser) to set a target boat on fire a mile away in choppy seas. It's a new, very science fictional advance for warfare, and it's something that's being lauded as a potential deterrent for piracy, and potentially for shooting down missiles or aircraft. The demonstration over the ocean, where there’s more to disrupt a laser beam, demonstrates a certain amount of technical advancement that seems very reminiscent of the advances in missile technology fifty years ago. There’s problems with this scenario, however, problems that extend beyond the technical aspects of the weapons to more structural problems. Tactically, a naval weapon such as this has some of its own advantages, but with a far more limited scope than what’s available at the present moment, and I can’t help but wonder at what the cost benefit would be, considering what must be going into the project to begin with. The ability to set a boat on fire has some certain non-lethal elements to it: doing something along those lines could be used to help disperse people on board a ship into the water, or onto lifeboats, rather than destroying the boat with a naval strike.

The BBC GlobalNews report had an interesting talk about the system, where a defense correspondent noted that something like this is not likely to replace something like a missile, given some of the drawbacks, such as the inability to attack something over the horizon line, but that it could very well be used, once the technique is refined a bit more, for anti-air craft and missile defenses.

The system has been talked about as a possible approach and deterrent to the growing piracy problem in and around Somalia, which strikes me as the wrong way to deal with this problem, and the type of thinking that doesn’t really solve the problem in the first place. A weapons system helps to solve the piracy problem on the spot, where it appears, but something like this does little, if anything, to address the underlying issues that cause piracy in the first place.

In this instance, it’s also been suggested as a potential deterrent, but when looking at the type of arsenal that’s available to deter pirates, ranging from warships to Navy SEAL teams, there’s already evidence that these tools aren’t acting as a deterrent. It’s entirely possible that despite the implementation of such a weapon, it wouldn’t serve as a deterrent when looking at the larger problem, as pirates find ways around the non-lethal tools that we’ve been putting out against them. Already, dazzling lasers and sound cannons have been deployed, and I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see them put on hearing protectors and goggles. Two years ago, I wrote about this shortly after Captain Richard Phillips was rescued.

I do like the idea of deterrence: it seemed to work during the Cold War, when the stakes were really high, and when everyone had something to lose if the USSR and the US went at one another with nuclear weapons. Deterrence works when one side realizes that they have little to gain by carrying out an action and take it seriously: in the case of the Cold War, the consequence of this was annihilation, which has a demonstrable impact on your popularity as a public figure (as in, most of your constituency will be dead). In this case, the stakes aren’t so high that Somali men aren’t willing to pile onto a boat, threaten and sometimes kill their crews and leave with a ransom – even in cases where they are killed, that doesn’t seem to solve the problem, probably because the state of Somalia is already problematic and that the risk of death at the hands of ship crews or various militaries is one worth taking.

Here, the only way that deterrence will work is if the act of piracy will bring on even more dire consequences. Following an attack, the US Navy would have to determine where the pirates were from, and completely destroy the ship, then move on to the port, then the families and home town of said pirate, before leveling everywhere where the former pirates walked, lived, ate and slept. And after that, for good measure, they’d lower the elevation a couple of more feet. That’s never going to happen – it might not even deter the pirates if they already have nothing to lose.

The solution remains: solve the underlying problem, and remove incentives wherever possible. Given the continuing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the conflict over Libya (not to mention our past history in Somalia), I’d hesitate to say that this is high up on our priorities list – even after an American couple was killed by pirates. So far, big business seems to be content as well to handle it monetarily, paying ransoms. The policy seemed to work in Libya back in the late 1700s, when the Barbary Pirates received tribute. The US’s first real conflict overseas was combating pirates when that tribute money stopped coming – I can’t help but wonder if the problem there will be more effectively solved if we took the same amount of money it takes to develop dedicated piracy weapons and simply pay them *not* to attack ships. Somehow, I don’t think, that with shiny new toys like this new laser system, that something like that will ever happen.

Source Code

Duncan Jones's latest film, Source Code, is an interesting film that avoids any major sophomore slump, and demonstrates that Jones is a competent, story-driven director. His first major film, Moon, won me over with its story and characters, and while this latest foray has its flaws, they are merely superficial.

Source Code opens with a train, where a man, Captain Coulter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), abruptly awakens and is faced with unfamiliar surroundings as a woman (he only learns later that her name is Christina Warren, played by Michelle Monaghan) says that she took his advice. His confusion mounts as he realizes that he’s in a different body altogether, before being blown apart by a bomb planted on the train. He abruptly wakes up again, this time in a small capsule, with a video of an Air Force captain, Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), who tells him that he’s on a mission to find out where the bomber is, and to stop another bombing in Chicago. So begins a Groundhog’s Day-esque series of events where Stevens enters another man’s last 8 minutes (Sean Fentress, who died in the bombing earlier that day) and works to find the bomber and the bomb.

The science fiction element here comes with the Source Code, which uses quantum entanglement to access the last eight minutes of a person’s life (described as an afterglow, akin to a light bulb), and essentially places the subject into a parallel version sidestep of the world, where he’s able to uncover information about the world around him as he seeks out the bomber. The story, much like the idea of separate worlds and time-paths, splits off in its focus, and to Jones’ credit, he juggles the themes (I’d hesitate to say stories, because they’re all part of the story) fairly well together.

The execution isn’t perfect – there’s points where the film feels a little forced, such as when we’re shown Stevens coming and going from the worlds multiple times, but the overall effect works – there’s plenty of tension, and several twists as the story changes in the last act. Looking back, the story isn’t so much a terrorist hunt as it is a man struggling for his mission when all of the choices available to him have been limited. Stevens finds himself in an impossible situation, one where he has to struggle for context when he has none. As science fiction author William Gibson noted: “The people who complain about Source Code not getting quantum whatsit right probably thought Moon was about cloning”. The same thing holds true for the counterterrorism element to the story here: this isn’t a film about an action hero tracking down the back guy: it’s the story of how someone accomplishes his mission, and the stakes that that mission might hold. Execution issues aside, this is a film that is really as thoughtful as Moon was.

In a lot of ways, this film is one of the best examples of real world events seeping into the public consciousness and expression: 9-11 and subsequent war on terror has undoubtedly had an impact on popular culture, but this is the one of the few examples of where a subtle theme of retrocontinuity has come into play: what if we could go back and do things over again? Given that between the political scene and a general yearning for the rosy pastures of the past, this film feels like it works on just about every level.

Doubly so, there's some excellent points to be made about the lengths to which people will go in the event of a crisis: here, Stevens uncovers some rather nasty surprises about his existence in the Source Code, and there are some fairly unpleasant consequences and moral quandaries for all involved: the life of one man or the lives of millions? This is a oft-tread story in the genre, and Jones handles it incredibly well.

At the end of the day, the Source Code reminded me the most of a 2005 movie, The Jacket, which features some similar concepts: working to change the past by righting a couple of wrongs, and it joins a growing roster of films, such as last year’s Inception, or Jones’ prior film, Moon, that focus on characters and story, rather than spectacle and action, as the genre is wont to do. It’s smart, and thought provoking, and I’m happy to see that with the number of science fiction films coming out this year (while I’ve liked some of them, like Battle: Los Angeles), there’s some genuine effort for something that’s not just for visual appreciation. The marketing for Source Code had me worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this film as much as I did, and I’m happy to report that it well exceeded my expectations. I'm not sure that it's as good as Moon is, but it's certainly better than a lot of what hits theaters.

There’s a closing moment towards the end when Stevens gets everything right, and I hoped that the film would end right then, as time stops and the camera pans across a still image, where the film is genuinely beautiful; sublime. It’s a powerful moment, one that shows all the stakes, and what we really take for granted. It’s the almost perfect end to the film (before a short coda), and an excellent addition to Moon for what Jones has created. I’m very pleased with what we’ve seen from him, and I already can’t wait to see what he’s got up his sleeve next.

Leviathan Wakes by James A. Corey

If you like Space Opera, this will be the book for you: Leviathan Wakes, by author James A. Corey (a collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). Spanning much of our solar system, it's an epic story in a reasonably near future, with an excellently conceived of environment and a fun story that is both action packed and thoughtful. Leviathan Wakes is the embodiment of what good space opera should be: there's a bit of a scientific background that helps to inform the plot, but the focus of this story is on the characters and major events that blast the story forward.

As such, Leviathan Wakes works on a number of levels. Throughout the story, the influence of two authors who have been identified strongly with the fantasy genre is clear in the text: there is a wide, sweeping and epic sense to the world that's been constructed here, and the fingerprints feel very much like there's experience with fantasy here. This ranges from the somewhat tired: some of the characters feel almost a little too forced with the world-weary or tough guy things that some modern fantasy novels seem to be saddled with, to the good: the world building and scale of the storyline, which seems to grow and grow.

In a large sense, a space opera story has far more in common with a fantasy novel, as opposed to a straight up science fiction novel, although Leviathan Wakes feels at times like it's caught between the two, for better and worse: for most of the story, it's evenly balanced between the two, and it works very well from that standpoint: the science helps to inform the rules of The Expanse, while the fantastic elements get taken over by the story and its own momentum. In a recent blog post somewhere, someone made the comment that Orbit was betting that a recent offer of a free ebook copy of Leviathan Wakes paired with a copy of Abraham's book The Dragon's Path would pull in a crossover audience from the fantasy fans, and after reading through this, I can easily believe it.

Leviathan Wakes stands out amongst a lot of books for the world-building efforts that have been put together for this story. In this far future, humanity hasn't quite made it out to the stars, but they've made it out into the neighborhood: Earth's Moon, Mars, (Venus had abortive attempts), the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and as far out as some of the moons of Neptune, all have some element of human habitation, with a wonderfully rich human society living and working within our solar system. Self-sustaining governments have grown up with their own cultures, and the book really shines by adding in an enormous depth to the environment in which the story is placed: it helps turn what would be a fairly average novel into something that really stuck in my head, and makes me biting at the bit for the next installments in the projected three book series.

The story that's settled in the world is one that works well: the destruction of a ship travelling through the solar system on a transit run, when they come across an abandoned ship, The Scopuli. When their ship is destroyed, a wave of outrage runs across the solar system, angering two sides of a brewing conflict, and pitting the Belters, Earthers and Martians against one another. At the same time, a cop is tasked with tracking down a girl for a family, bringing him on another track towards The Scopuli, and soon, the main characters are caught between revolution and corporate interests. The story really surprised me at points as the authors angled things in unexpected ways, and they manage to pack quite a bit into the pages. The book falls roughly into three parts (and I thought that it could have transitioned a bit better between each of the acts), that bring the story higher and higher to the end, and the entire thing is really a rush from beginning to end.

If there's any fault with the book, it's in the execution, where it felt like some of the book could have been trimmed down from its lengthily page count (almost 600 pages in my copy), and at some points, it feels as if there's parts that are just far too wordy, with excess exposition and explanation that didn't necessarily need to be present.

This book is one that I'll predict will divide audiences along a science fiction / space opera divide. The science here exists mainly in the background: there's some plausible elements here, as well as the usual grain of salt, as ships careen back and forth between the Belt and various planets, with some token explanations, but it's not the central focus of the story. People will fall on either side, either advocating for a stronger or more realistic setting for the stories, and people who might argue that it's not necessarily all that important to the story and that it should be enjoyed on its own merits. Coming to the end, I think that the latter argument holds up a bit better, but I'm happy to see that the authors have given a bit to support it in some measure of reality.

At the end of the day, Leviathan Wakes was a book that I really enjoyed: there wasn't a moment that I found myself really bored, and few occasions wondering why the book was drifting aimlessly: we've got a fun space opera story that's created one hell of a world to play in, with this story thundering out the gates, all guns ablaze, while touching on everything from military science fiction to romantic entanglements, and I'm already awaiting to see what happens next in The Expanse.

Echo Echo

St. Patrick’s day is a good day to listen to one of my absolute favorite albums, Carbon Leaf’s Echo Echo. Released in 2001, this was one of my early introductions to the band, alongside their first major record label album, Indian Summer (also quite good). Amazon.com had released the album as a free download while I was in college, and the album became a regular on my rotation of songs on my iPod and computer playlists. Interestingly, it’s remained there since, and one of the few albums that I return to again and again.

Echo Echo is a perfect balance between sound and lyrics. There’s a certain comfort that the band seems to have across the board here, listening to the album from start to finish. ‘The Boxer’ opens up with a quick start, with a rich blend of instrumentation and vocals from both Barry Privett and the rest of the background group. The rest of the album falls into place nicely after that, through to the end, with songs like ‘Wanderin' Around’, ‘Shine’, ‘Mary Mac’ and ‘Desperation Song’ injecting energy to the thing, while ‘On Any Given Day’, ‘Torn To Tattered’, and ‘Toy Soldiers’ balance it out with something a little slower. The album ends up with ‘Maybe Today’ and a hidden track ‘My Dear’, to close out the album softly.

It’s difficult to explain some of the hows and whys of how the sound works for me. I don’t have a background in music, but I suspect that there’s something to do with the chords, but to my untrained ear, the album feels fresh, full of air and very spring like – it conjures up images of bombing along some of Vermont’s back state routes with the windows down, the music high up on the speakers. Particularly, ‘The Boxer’, ‘Toy Soldiers’, and ‘Lonesome Pine’ all help there, evenly spaced along the album.

Lyrically, the album holds up well though out, particularly ‘Toy Soldiers’, as I keep coming back to it year after year with reaffirmed meaning and understanding of the lyrics:

We find the people of our dreams We find that they're not what they seem I've learned that people come and go I've learned that families break and grow Toy soldiers brave away those tears Toy soldiers hope for better years Today I strike out on my own The dog is dead. We kids have grown.

Other songs hit me in much the same way, with the same weight. 'Wandrin’ Away' speaks to me as someone who’s travelled a bit, while 'Torn To Tattered' has comforted me when I’ve been down more than once. The lyrics are stories, complicated ones, and their meaning still comes out and speaks to me years on.

I seem to always find myself listening to this album around St. Patrick’s day. While the album doesn’t have any particular ‘Irish’ theme, there are subtle influences throughout, especially in ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Mary Mac’ (although Mary Mac is really a Scottish song). The band has been known to play covers of Irish songs at their concerts (including a recent one known as ‘Irish Song’), and amongst their instrumentation, their use of the Tin whistle also helps add in the flavor to a number of songs.

At the end of the day, Echo Echo just works. Balanced between an excellent sound and lyrics, Carbon Leaf’s never quite managed to top the album, for which I’m thankful. Their growing collection of songs is impressive, and they’ve put together some great albums, but none quite feel as consistent and click in quite the same way.

The Wedding

In way of a general announcement/save the date, Megan and I can announce that we've set some firm details down for our wedding:

May 19th, 2012, in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The ceremony will be held in Lititz Spring Park, with a reception to follow shortly thereafter at the General Sutter Inn, which is within walking distance of the actual ceremony.

As of right now, we're still working out a couple of things: where we'll register if you want to buy us stuff, and what the guest list will be. We're operating with a limit of a hundred and fifty people, and we're looking to keep it fairly small anyway. Invitations will be sent out when that list is finalized.

There's more information to come, and I'll be putting together a tab that'll have the pertinent information handy. Entries will be tagged here.

Needless to say, I'm rather pleased at all this. We've been looking at a bunch of ideas, and the Park and Inn are both practical and both very nice locations for a day like this. It should be quite a bit of fun.

Battle: Los Angeles

There are very few movies that I'll actually fanboy before their release: following the trailers, rumors pictures, soundtrack, etc, but Battle: Los Angeles was one that I've kept my eyes on ever since I first heard about it. It looked and sounded a lot like the type of film that District 9 was: a somewhat different take on an alien invasion, and that style of originality is a good thing in the genre. Battle: Los Angeles doesn't necessarily rise to the level of District 9, but it does know what it is: a movie about Marines shooting at aliens, and when the film stays on target, it really keeps to it, coming out the other side a fun, exciting war film that completely lived up to my expectations.

Reading the reviews of Battle: Los Angeles, I can't help but think that a lot of reviewers missed the point of the movie. I've begun to realize that some films need to be watched as they are intended, and this one isn't designed to be anything more than a science fiction war flick, stripped of context to play out a very small picture within a much larger one. Coming out of a Master's degree in Military History, this approach really appeals to me, trying to make sense of a larger issue from a smaller one.

As an action film, this is a good environment to be in: the Marines get to do what they do best, and we don't have a whole lot of extraneous clutter such as the last minute solution that saves the day. There's some information delivered via television at points (although it's strange that given the attack, networks are still broadcasting, and there's power), and apparently the alien invasion force is after our water. There's also some obligatory sub-plots about Aaron Eckhart's character Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz, and something about his history with the Marines in Iraq. Beyond that, the film is simple: get out to a police station, rescue the civilians, and get out. The film, armed with this goal, hops from street to street as the squad navigates the streets of Los Angeles, shooting their way through when needed.

The action is well done, and director Jonathan Liebesman does a good job taking up the tension a bit, revealing the aliens little by little in quick bursts, which combined with some shaky-camera work, lends itself well to a chaotic environment and situation for the team. While the film doesn't have a whole lot going for it in terms of overall story, it does have some very good points when it comes to leadership and leading through a difficult situation. A key part of this story, while clichéd, is the story between SSgt Nantz and 2nd Lt. William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), with an inexperienced officer learning exactly how to lead his soldiers.

The lesson isn't a perfect one: it's ridden with some clichés and overdone dialogue, but it gets the point across over the course of the film: you have a mission, and you have someone to lead, with people to follow. As Nantz notes at a couple of points, he'll follow left or right, but the leader needs to pick a direction. This strikes me as a good lesson in the military field, and I'd be interested to see what the military community feels about this film (aside from the nitpicking on the technical level). The marines in the film are essentially told to go to a location, and to come back. They're not told how to go about their work, it's just expected to be done in a timely fashion. (In this case, before the bombs start falling out of the sky). If there's any central theme to this film, it's this.

I was hoping, distantly, that there would be a bit more to tie in this film to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as District 9 did with immigration and Moon did with our energy crisis: that small theme that sits in the back of the film, helping to inform how things go along. That doesn't quite happen with Battle: Los Angeles, as it very well could have, but it's clear that this film is inspired by the experiences that we've had in the Middle East since 2001. There are a number of points where this very well could have been part of that conflict, and I suspect that there were a number of military advisors and veterans to help tweak the look and feel here and there.

But the absence here didn't really hamper the film: indeed, it was nice to see something that was largely unencumbered by a moralistic writer, decrying whether or not war was good or bad. Here, it doesn't matter, as much as the intentions of the invading aliens don’t matter for this picture. They're there, and the characters have to deal with this major problem, with little guidance or instruction. From all appearances, there’s no magic bullet in the form of a computer virus, or that water will make them disintegrate, just lots of regular bullets and explosives to hold off their advance.

What I was most happy about was that the film took a fun concept and took it seriously. One of my main complaints about other alien invasions was that they come off as a joke: aliens land, shoot up some monuments or do something really dumb, and humanity wins the day. Here, we see that there’s an organized military effort attacking the city and planet. Ignoring for a moment the logistics of interstellar travel and landing an invading army on another planet, their approach makes the most sense to me: you want to take a planet, you’ll need a military to do so, and an organized ground force, if you’re going that way, works well. I’m also going with the line of thought that as these are aliens, their logic when it comes to attacking will similarly be somewhat alien.

The aliens are particularly well done. They’re not the usual weird ears or human actor stuffed in a suit: it looks like the designers took a leaf from District 9’s book and decided to make them into something that really felt out of this world: there’s a great (messy!) scene where the soldiers try to find out how to kill one of the invaders, stabbing various organs before finding the sweet spot. The aliens themselves seem to be organized and are particularly brutal, shooting anything that moves and are equipped for their jobs: guns, packs, etc. At one point, it’s outstanding to see them pull one of their wounded comrades away from danger: it’s an approach to an invasion film that I haven’t seen, and it’s great to see someone thinking through some of the environment.

The film’s real faltering point is its reliance on the clichés and poor script throughout the film. The dialogue sounds very much like how I’ve heard Marines talk, and there’s only a couple of people who really get a lot of face time in the film, with a small cast of rotating Marines to fill in where needed. I wish that there was a bit more to some of the guys, but there’s an element of tongue-in-cheek when the real corny parts come through (such as right at the end), and it’s something that I’m willing to forgive the film for.

For all of its flaws, Battle: Los Angeles is a fun film, and it came exactly as expected: aliens vs. marines, with plenty of action, and just enough story to carry it all forward.

Libya

It's strange to see people who were adamantly against the Iraq and/or Afghanistan wars decry the Obama Administration's stance towards the uprisings in the Middle East, particularly when it comes to Libya and the violence that's broken out over the last couple of weeks. There's been calls for operations such as a no fly zone to prevent Muammar Gaddafi from attacking rebel forces and civilians in Libya, and while I'm not disputing that some form of intervention is a good idea, US military operations would be a bad idea, setting a further bad precedent for the country already embroiled in two wars across the world.

While the idea of military intervention as a tool to be used by an administration is one that has some merit, what first appears to be a fairly simple idea turns out to be a very difficult one to implement: to do so would be tantamount to a declaration of war on Libya. While the United States (and more importantly, along with United Nations peacekeeping forces) has upheld no-fly zones over countries such as Bosnia and Iraq in recent military history, Libya presents a far more challenging mission. Where Bosnia didn't have an extensive anti-aircraft network, and where Iraq had just been invaded, Libya has invested quite a bit of money in an organized military and defense force, one that would have to be dismantled and neutralized prior to the deployment of regular flights over the country.

This isn't an easy step, because it would require a number of different combat elements to undertake: dedicated support teams for the aircraft, up to date and accurate intelligence on the Libyan defenses, and the forces (air and ground, most likely) to take down their targets. This would have to happen while the United States is committed to two other combat missions, in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which take a serious amount of funding, personnel and equipment to keep going. Siphoning off planes and resources from either of those two locations would have an adverse impact on the ongoing operations over there (most likely hitting Afghanistan more heavily), which in turn causes long-term problems for the people on the ground in completing their own objectives.

This happens in an environment where the country has been increasingly war-weary, having seen the impact that war has on the country, to say the least of what's happened overseas. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower had sought to reduce the country's role in the world by not utilizing the U.S. armed forces as a sort of policeman for stopping communism, seeking to help prop up governments (for good or bad) in their own footprints. There are some practical lessons to be learned here, particularly the fiscal one, which sought to move the U.S.'s foreign policy to one that avoided costly wars continually after Korea, although there's a bit of a mixed record here. Transplanted into the present day, and pushing for an armed response to the Libyan conflict might bring about some short-term gains, but it could be counter-intuitive in longer strategic goals for the region, and it would represent a costly endeavor.

The U.S. would face reduced effectiveness of countering the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, because of the reduced personnel and air cover that they already enjoy, as forces are redeployed to the North African country, where a continual military engagement would quickly wear down equipment and personnel, if the experiences of Iraq and Bosnia are anything to go by, and that's with some of the major problems already taken care of. Landing ground forces in Libya would essentially be a third invasion of the country, with casualties expected as the U.S. jumps in the middle of a civil war, which can turn problematic when we already have a poor track record of understanding local culture, politics and strategy.

Furthermore, we would need to fully understand the larger strategic aims for the country. If the goal is simply to save lives, there alternatives, and if the goal is full on regime change, there would need to be a fully committed US (and most likely, UN) mission to undertake that, something that most likely won't sit well, not only with the American public (in the long term) or the European Union, which is already pulling away from coalition duties in Afghanistan and Iraq. A no-fly zone would most likely help to accomplish the first goal, but not the second, but it would require a significant military effort to undertake, an effort that will likely outstrip the direct benefit to the U.S. strategic goals for the region.

Ultimately, there is no easy answer to what will happen in Libya, but in all likelihood, military options, while on the table, won't be considered unless there is significant participation from European allies, something that I don't see happening any time in the near future, as they largely have their own internal issues to consider. It's a real shame, because America and its allies have come out of the last nine years with one of the most experienced and well equipped military forces than at any point in recent times. However, if the will and means aren't in place for a long-term military engagement, it's something that probably won't, or shouldn't happen. At the same time, if those calling for action in Libya already don't have the will or desire to support the goals that have been put into place in the Middle East already, it strikes me that there is some real evaluation required of the country and its desire to wage war. We all must live with the consequences of what we reap.

Kraken, by China Miéville

Last year, finally picked up my first China Miéville book, The City and The City, and was blown away by the story and world building that set the story in such an interesting location. At the same time, I’d picked up his latest book, Kraken, which had promptly been picked up by my girlfriend, who’s urged me to read it since. Kraken turns out to have been a very different book from Miéville’s prior work, and was one that sucked me in with his elegant prose and fascinating take on an alternate, hidden London.

Kraken opens with the theft of a museum specimen, a Giant Squid, from London’s Natural History Museum, pulling Billy Harrow into a hidden and dangerous world of magic, cults, special police units and evil, all the while he’s chased down by several groups, all with different intentions towards him. Approached by a police force that specializes in the paranormal and cults, Harrow goes on the run, sees his best friend eaten by a creepy pair of characters known as Goss and Stubby, before rescued by Dane, one of the museum’s security guards, and a member of a Kraken cult. And that’s just in the first 50 pages. The story continues onwards, and we dive deeper down the rabbit’s hole into a brilliant, wonderful London that is both vibrant and menacing.

Kraken is a rich, dense read, and finishing it left me wondering what I might have missed as I read through it, and I suspect that it’s one of the novels that I’ll have to reread somewhere down the line to take it all in again. In a very strange way, the book reminded me most of Neil Gaiman’s fantastic novel, American Gods, dealing with some very similar issues, but with a similar environment surrounding the characters throughout the story.

This book is all about faith: faith in wonderfully fractured world, where belief in the unbelievable brings out some interesting things. Throughout the story, the center plot point is the stolen Kraken, sought by a number of people: the Krakenists who want to keep their sacred object safe, or properly destroyed, a magician seeking to hold onto his own immortality and power, with various story lines weaving in and out in a complicated manner. The story lags through the middle, but it’s not until the end that the really interesting stuff happens: magic and faith in this setting are essentially products of people’s actions: understanding the significance of what you’ve done is just as important as what you’re trying to do. It’s difficult to explain without ruining several plot points, but the ending left me rather breathless.

In addition to the dense core story that Miéville has set up, he’s put together a spectacular London that pulls in elements from all types of mythology , the fantastic and even things like Star Trek. Several perspectives follow the action, taking a number of characters through a number of locations throughout the city: hidden streets and pubs, places erased from London’s memory, all the while coming across a series of weirder and more fascinating characters. Frequently, I thought that Miéville just unleashed his imagination on the page, and there’s parts where the book could be slimmed down, straightened out a bit, but I also can’t help but think that that would take out some of the fun in the story and the journey that we’re taken through. Kraken, while it has its flaws, is a fantastic book, in every sense of the word.

Random Things

The iPad 2 was unveiled the other day by a skeletal Steve Jobs. It looks neat, and it's clearly designed to entice the next crop of people who held off on the first one. Faster, slightly different shape, new cover, etc. They've got a good product, and I suspect that anyone who's waited a little while will be happy that they did.

That being said, I'm not planning on upgrading mine for, well, ever. It's a fantastic product (and I'm decidedly not an Apple fanboy) that I've gotten a lot of use out of since I got mine 8 months ago. I do a lot of writing on mine, and I've been happy that it's an all around general computer that does pretty much everything I want it to. I don't do a lot of web browsing on it, but when I have, I've generally been pleased. (My one complaint is Safari's insistence on updating every single open tab when there's a couple open. It's annoying). Writing is fantastic, and as predicted, I've gotten better at writing on the screen. Moreover, I use the calendar a LOT. Since I take the thing everywhere, I've gotten into the habit of writing down dates, something that I've typically never done, and it's nice to have a reminder when I need to be somewhere.

Plus, game developers are starting to get in on the platform, and there have been some very cool games over the past couple of months that I've gotten hooked on. There's the obligitory Angry Birds obsession, and I've found two other games lately, Battleheart and Canabalt, that I've really enjoyed. Battleheart is a fun cross between World of Warcraft and D&D, which appeals to my geek sensibilities, and Canabalt is a game that's stupidly simple, and stupidly addicting (running and jumping over gaps on a roof).

I've been reading more books on the device as well, mainly late at night, when I don't want to turn on a light and keep Megan up. It's not something that I read a lot - I'm currently reviewing Embedded, by Dan Abnett for SF Signal, and between late night reading sessions, I typically pull out my other book, Kraken, which I've got in hardcopy.

I also haven't upgraded my iPad since I got it - it's still on the original iOS system, which I'm content with. I'm not particularly won over by the introduction of folders, or the removal of the lock switch (which I really like having). It was fine when I got it, and I'm still pleased with the purchase.

I've had the pleasure of writing for the website Blastr a number of times over the past couple of months (the articles that I've written are linked in the 'Writing' tab here), coming up with lists on all sorts of things when it comes to science fiction. It's fun to relate what we love to read and watch to current events or to pick apart a franchise for things, and while it's not particularly smart writing, it's fun writing, and I'm really enjoying delving into a topic and finding a wide range of things.

By far, my favorite one to write thus far has been the '83 Crazy Differences Between Fringe’s Alternative Universe and Ours' piece, which allowed me to look at one of my favorite shows, Fringe. There have been a couple of things added, and if the show goes on, I'm sure that we'll be able to add an update to it at some point.

Lists by themselves are meaningless, I think: the usual top ten or top one hundred lists of the 'best' and 'favorite' types are always so contingent on people's individual tastes - and they fall into either the list of safe choices, where few people can argue about the selections, or a bunch of obscure or other ones that gets people arguing about everything that wasn't on the list. It's frustrating to read comments, I'm finding, because people either don't read the article and think about it, or read it and ignore what you're trying to put forward.

Such is life. I've got a couple of lists that I'm working on, and I’m excited about what's to come.

Last year, a friend of mine and I started up a website called Geek Mountain State (a play off of Green Mountain State), designed as a catch all for all things geek in Vermont. So far, it's been quite a lot of fun to write for. The idea for the site goes back to 2009, when I was driving out to Middlebury for a talk by author P.W. Singer, who wrote a book called Wired For War, (I wrote a review for the book for io9, here, and interviewed Mr. Singer, here.) an examination of robotics in the battlefield. It struck me that there were probably more talks like that around the state. Over a year and a half later, I've heard more and more about all types of science and technology news, commentary on the future, politics, geeky events and things along those lines throughout the state, and after speaking with a friend of mine, we decided that the idea had merit, and we decided to launch a blog, along with a Twitter and Facebook feed, to capture these sorts of things happening around the state.

Looking at almost 30 other websites, we've been able to update a daily list of events happening throughout the state that relate to geek interests, either in the typical geek interest levels, such as science and technology, but also gaming and book signings, while we prowl through Flickr and online for photos of niche things that catch our interest: ruins, wind farms, bookstores, and quite a lot more, along with blurbs and links to articles that fall under the same heading, as well as short pieces that I'll put together.

The site's not quite where I want it yet - I'd love to see a larger audience (it's certainly growing though), and eventually, our own domain that we can maintain ourselves. We've got some ideas that we'll implement as time goes on - I'd love to begin interviewing people in all walks of geek life, get some more original articles, new writers, and monetize the site on a local level, for local businesses, but some of that is pretty far down the line. Eventually, I'd love to get to the point where we can solicit and commission local science fiction and fantasy (and pay people to do it!), but I don't know how to get there yet. Personally, I'd love to see an anthology of local speculative fiction, by local people - that would be beyond cool.

Watson

A lot seems to get lost in the minutiae when it comes to science fiction and fantasy: we were supposed to have flying cars, disregarding that most people can't drive when limited to two dimensions, space exploration will be our salvation, despite the fact that our odds of reproducing and successfully colonizing anything outside of Earth is extremely limited at the present moment, and that when robots and computer systems can best a human, it's the beginning of the end of humanity.

I've been thinking of this since I read Ted Chiang's novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, dealing with the education and development of a viable A.I., and the complexities that arise when putting together such a thing. Chiang rejects the notion that a computer that's rigidly programmed will automatically produce a superior being: rather, intelligence is far more complex, and anything that is truly intelligent in the same way that we are could potentially come about in the same ways that people can.

Why all the fuss about Watson? It's an interesting programming trick, to be sure, but hardly the end of humanity as we know it. One of the books that I've been fascinated by over the last couple of years is P.W. Singer's Wired for War, which examines the development of robotic combat systems, a science fiction concept in and of itself. Every time a new type of robot is deployed, the internet inevitably shits itself predicting that Terminator is right around the corner, and that it's time to start stocking up on canned goods for when the robotic rebellion comes barreling down on our squishy, organic heads.

The future is rarely as predicted: look at the accuracy of weathermen. Within science fiction, we take far too much that's designed for entertainment as gospel, and very rarely will a science fiction film actually see some realistic predictions. 2001: A Space Odyssey missed by a long shot (we were supposed to have habitable moon bases), Terminator predicted our demise years ago, and Minority Report, one of the only films that seems to have gotten a lot of things right, overestimated things by half a decade: we've got our motion controlled computers, except that it's in gaming consoles.

The pace of technology doesn't live or die by our expectations of entertainment and wonder: indeed, the truly visionary science fiction films understand that our surroundings are build around how we will use things. Moon's director, Duncan Jones, noted that when building the sets and equipment for his film, they wanted to make sure that the designers built it with practicality in mind. Steven Spielberg gathered a bunch of technology experts into a think tank for the world-building of Minority Report.

To date, we don't have servant androids, daily moon flights or Zeppelins, for the simple reason that there's either no practical daily use for such things, or there's a better alternative. True, robots do exist in people's homes, in the form of iRobot's Roomba, but these aren't multiple-purpose devices: they exist to fill a certain function. I wouldn't trust it (as much as I'd like to) to cook me dinner, fetch the mail or put away things out of order, simply because I can do those things myself, and at a far less cost than such a thing would run me otherwise. Commonplace spaceflight, while on the brink of actually happening to the general (if wealthy) public, is not for business or industry, but entertainment, simply because we haven't found any other way to make it profitable for investors, while airplanes can do everything that an airship can faster and cheaper, because the infrastructure and needs of the economic world are in place for it.

At the same time, the things that are the most science fictional in our world go almost unnoticed, either because they aren't dramatic in any particular way: the number of computers and electronics in an automobile, for example, to the tablet computer that I'm typing this on. Take anything from the modern day and transplant it into the golden age of science fiction, it would most likely shock the world. Even things like Amazon.com, Facebook and Twitter fall under these categories, developed in response to how people interact and use the internet: technology has an almost organic development, changing in response to other, prior changes that pave the way for own existence. Twitter, for example, most likely never would have existed but for the happy coincidence of the prevalence of text messaging and Facebook's own introduction of status updates. Amazon.com was an outgrowth of business's ability to consolidate and the introduction of wide-spread internet use. When looking at the future, it's often the really little things, rather than the dramatic, that define our lives.  There are exceptions to this: major terrorist attacks such as on September 11th radically changed things in a lot of ways: most likely, some technologies and political or business environments would have altered how things went, much like the industrial boom that was sparked by the Second World War changed America's stance amongst the other nations on the planet.

Singer's book comes to mind in all of this, because of the way that robotics have developed for the battlefield throughout the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. He rejected the idea that we'll ever have a '3 Laws of Robotics', simply because they get in the way of a combat robot, but also because we really don't have robotics in the same way that we thought we might have: automatic responses and programming, with a person in the loop to direct how it carries out its mission. Robotics, rather than multi-purpose, are task-specific, much as Watson is on Jeopardy. He might be able to put together a lot of information and connect the dots, but that's what he's supposed to do: world domination most likely won't occur to him, and even if it did, I doubt that it could be carried out. Now, should he have the ability to learn, and apply the fact connection to a desire in a highly complicated and sophisticated manner, we could have a very different story.

We were supposed to have robots in the future. Instead, we have iPads, surveillance cameras, global positioning systems and quite a lot more, because of needs that weren't predicted back in the middle of the century, predictions that were influenced by the optimism that only a wealthy nation full of technology could bring.

Were these predictions bad? No. Unfounded? Nope. 2001: A Space Odyssey, came out at the beginnings of the Space Race, unsure of what would happen. In 1969, we went to the moon and discovered a magnificent, but empty expanse on the Moon, and haven't looked back. Blade Runner saw a future that was more grounded: a lived-in world, mired with the same human problems that have been the constant throughout our history.

When it comes to predicting the future, we might very well still have a lot of these things: we're making early steps towards civilian spaceflight, environmental costs might predicate the elimination of airplanes, and household robotics will likely be more sophisticated. However, the steps towards this direction will always rest on the requirements of the people using them. We simply don't need a supercomputer to take over the world: we needed one for entertainment.

Monsters

Six years ago, a NASA space probe returned to Earth, carrying with it alien life. When it crash landed in northern Mexico, and alien life forms spread throughout the country, prompting United States and Mexican authorities to quarantine the region to contain their spread. When a photographer is asked to bring his employer's daughter back to the United States, they have to travel through the infected zone to reach safety. The film is a stunning, beautiful, and understated movie that surprised me all the way through to the credits.

Recently released to DVD, Monsters is a film that I've been wanting to see for a little while now: it was on a limited circuit in theaters, and on demand, and it wasn't until its recent release that I've been able to see it. The wait was certainly worth it: Monsters is easily one of the best science fiction films to have been released in 2010, and easily ranks amongst some of my favorite films in the genre, such as Moon, District 9 and Alien.

What's even more surprising here is that Monsters, directed by Gareth Edwards, was an exceptionally cheap film to make, coming in around $500,000, cheaper than Moon at $5 million and District 9 at $29 million, by a long shot. Like some of its fellow low-budget counterparts, the strength here doesn't lie with known stars or even elaborate sets, but is exemplified by its story and themes, elements that most likely couldn't have shone through to the extent that they did in any other way.

Like Alien or even Jaws, Monsters does more with less - a lot less - The aliens that we see are only seen at rare points in the film. Watching promotional trailers for this, it's easy to see how this type of film could have been seen as a monster flick - the plot certainly allows for something along those lines (and it could be an option at some point, certainly) - but this film isn't really about the aliens that have landed: this film is, at its heart a love story with a political message within it. Low budgets certainly don't equal quality film and storylines, but Monsters hits both the quality visual appearance, and quality storyline to make this something special. Furthermore, this is a science fiction film where the film isn't driven by the strange science fiction things in the foreground, but a human story within speculative fiction constraints that sets the boundaries for how the story plays out.

The idea of the United States constructing a wall to hold out aliens has a clear and pointed political message behind it, particularly relating to immigration from Mexico into the US. Much like District 9 was about immigration, the message comes off as a little heavy-handed at points, the filmmaker making it clear what he thinks about the situation. Immigration is a multifaceted issue, coming across as a threat to be contained, or something with an unseen or hidden beauty that requires the right timing and placement to be seen.

When it comes to the other element of the story the relationship between Andrew, a photojournalist and Samantha, the daughter of his editor, the film gets a little more clunky. There's something to be said for an offbeat nature to Andrew's character as someone who's cynical and fairly unlikable, but the film does very little to expand the characters or provide them with any measure of depth. The story is elementary: boy and girl meet, boy likes girl, girl is engaged and eventually likes him. That being said, the story works for what it is, and while it's uneven, it doesn't tank the movie like it should have.

Filmwise, the movie is gorgeous. I can't help but wonder if Edwards (who directed the film and worked as the cinematographer) has experience as a photographer, because there's a keen eye towards the visual element of the film, with the focus blurring and focusing appropriately, with the camera lingering on the right scenes, and generally not feeling as if the film is driven by the director, but along for the ride as the two characters wander up through Mexico. My only complaint is that when nightfall comes, it's just a bit too dark, with it hard to see what's going on. Coupled with Jon Hopkin's mesmerizing soundtrack, the film is quiet but vibrant at the same time.

Monsters is an excellent film with a quality eye behind the camera, with wonderful colors and composition, with a simple, yet powerful story that ties it all together. It's a quiet, understated and interesting film, one of the best of 2010, and an excellent example of the genre itself.

Lightspeed Magazine

I'm happy to report that I've been asked to join the Lightspeed Magazine team as a submissions reader. Lightspeed, a relatively new magazine focusing on Science Fiction, edited by John Joseph Adams, who's edited Brave New Worlds and Wastelands.

I'll be working to help sort out the so-called 'slush-pile' that magazines get from writers hoping to be published, sorting out what should be included, and what shouldn't be. It's something that I'm interested in, and I'm hopeful that this will be a good look at how the industry functions, especially as someone who enjoys writing and putting together stories. It's an exciting opportunity, I think, one that could potentially open doors or at least show me which way to the door, down the road.

In the meantime, it's a magazine that I'd recommend anyway: the stories that I have read have all been fantastic, high-calibre pieces of fiction, and a lot of these stories have gone on to other anthologies or have been nominated for some awards in the field. The magazine's website is: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/, with the ability to read online, or via various ebook formats.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Ted Chiang's longest work to date, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, is a fascinating story that takes a bit of a new look at how an artificial intelligence might develop. The story is understated, quiet and humble, but is exciting and touching at the same time. This was a story that I absolutely devoured in a single sitting that stretched late into the night, something that rarely happens with any story.

The book's description includes a quote from Alan Turing that helps to set this story apart from other robot stories:

“Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.”

The story follows Ana Alvarado and Derek Brooks as their own lives intertwines over the course of a decade. Software AI has been achieved, and is a growing industry at the start of the novella, one that changes as the story progresses. Fans of stories such as I, Robot or other reads about robotics will find this to be a vastly different type of story, and for that reason, it's very refreshing. Working to create Digients, a sort of artificial intelligence profile or avatar online, we see the introduction of Jax, Marco and Polo, who essentially grow up under the care of Ana and Derek.

Fiction is a product of our own lives and surroundings. Lifecycles is a good example of how Chiang was able to take a very old story type (Man creating life himself) and create something that feels new and fresh. Very often, our perceptions of robotics are shaped by dramatic presentations such as The Terminator, or The Matrix, stories that predict that the rise of a robotic race will automatically deduce that the human race will be pegged for extinction. Similarly, it’s also assumed that a comprehensive knowledge and sheer logical reasoning will prove to be a superior mind.

Chiang takes on the other side suggested by Turing in his approach to the development of an artificial intelligence, which strikes me as a far more realistic method for developing a viable computer intelligence: you make them grow up. This happens over the decade that the story takes place, but it’s far more complicated than that. In other stories, there’s never really a reason for creating a robot, or at the very least, there’s no reason given for developing a new mind. Here, it’s very much the same thing, but the reasons are stark: it’s a business, and there’s little demand for highly realistic artificial avatars that talk back or cause problems as they’re developing.

The important thing here is that there are some major philosophical issues at the heart of any sort of AI, especially when one is assuming that it will be a being along the same lines of a human: can they be purpose driven, or is there any intent to their design? Religious arguments aside, I don’t see any particular purpose to human beings, just a happy accident of chemistry and circumstances at the right time billions of years ago. So to, would a machine guided by rigid logical programming be the same thing? I think not, although the appearance could be replicated somewhat with fast programming.

Intelligence is also complicated: it’s not just that a robot would have to have 700 million languages at its disposal, or whatever actions pre-programmed into it: any such being really isn’t truly free as people seem to be. Rather, complicated intelligence (and this is from my own limited understanding) comes more with the ability to draw connections between different, unrelated things. Driving along one route, I try to infer what lies between another road that’s running parallel to me, based on what I can see in between the two locations. My dog sees my sister and realizes that not only is she outside, but that if she runs to the window, she’ll see her as she runs down into the yard. These types of responses aren’t ones that I can’t see being rigidly programmed into a computer, but are things that will learned from experience.

Interestingly, the book has far more in common with another, slightly lesser known story from Isaac Asimov (and film adaptation), The Bicentennial Man, which sees a robot learn to become a human, going to the extreme and replacing metal for flesh. I greatly enjoyed the movie (I’ve never understood the hate that it seems to elicit), and The Lifecycle of Software Objects takes some similar lines of reasoning and does them in a far better fashion.

Set amongst a sort of tech boom that would be familiar to anyone who used the internet since the 1990s, companies come and go, but the people remain, and find their own way through life. In a large way, the cover is exceedingly deceptive here, because this isn’t a story about robots, it’s a story about people who deal with robots, and one another. Chiang does a marvelous job here, setting the lives of two people in a mere thirty thousand words, where things never feel like they are rushed or that anything major has been glossed over.

Where there’s the approach to growing an intelligence, there’s a lot to be said for the people on the other side of the equation. As we watch the trio of Digients grow up in their own little world (and a times, jumping into a robot body that their owners have for them), it’s apparent that they’re as much a product of their parents than their surroundings, and that frequently, their upbringing has as much an impact on themselves as it does their caretakers. What I found most fascinating is that this isn’t really a story about robots at all: they’re central to the plot, but the real point here is in the long relationship between Ana and Derek, and how two people who are so similar can be so far apart and estranged from one another. It’s a love story in its own right, between the two humans, but also for a parent for their creation. In doing so, Chiang presents an interesting idea that robots and artificial intelligences wouldn’t be so different from us, and that the creation of an AI isn’t any different than parenting.

The story is also available online, here.

Brian Jacques & Redwall

According to the BBC, children's author Brian Jacques, who is most famous for his Redwall books, has passed away at the age of 72. I'm very saddened by this, because Jacques' books were one of the first introductions that I had to fantasy literature as a child, starting in late elementary school and lasting throughout my time in High School.

My high school library was well stocked by the time that I reached Harwood. The first book that I remember reading from the series was Mossflower, the second book published in the series, with Martin the Warrior fighting against the evil Tsarmina in the castle Kotir, where he frees Mossflower from tyrany. The stories were clearcut, easy to read and no matter how many times I revisited them, I was always entertained by their stories and characters.

There were a number of favorites in the series for me: Mariel of Redwall and The Bellmaker stand out, as well as Mattimeo, The Pearls of Lutra, The Long Patrol, Marlfox, and Lord Brocktree, not to mention the book that started it all: Redwall. But, of all of the stories, Mossflower has long remained a favorite read.

What impressed me the most in the series was the interconnected nature of Jacques' world. The books were published outside of a timeline, and as new books came out, they typically visited different parts of the story's overall chronology. Characters that I read about in one book had become myth or legend in the following, giving an impressive sense of scale for the series, which probably left the biggest impression on me as I began to read fantasy.

Redwall was a series that I eventually phased out of my reading as I got older and found new things to read. As new Redwall books came out, I began to realize that there really wasn't anything new from book to book: the same formula, dialogue and largely - heroic characters - which came into conflict with other things that I was reading that allowed for more variety, and more ambiguity to the characters and plotlines.

I've never looked back on the series since High School, but I've never forgotten that had I not read Redwall as much as I did, I may never have gotten into other speculative fiction books: Harry PotterThe series came towards the end of the Redwall books. This was also at the same time that I started reading the classics of science fiction: Dune and Foundation, I, Robot and Starship Troopers,

The Redwall stories are pivotal novels, perfect for that age: full of adventure, heroic characters and rich worlds, they have an absolute moral compass, but exist outside of the normal conventions: religion doesn't muddy the waters here, and the reliance isn't on the magic or the instruments of the world (in most cases), but on the superb characters themselves that Jacques created.

With his death, the world is missing one excellent storyteller, and for that, I'm saddened, because the stories that he told were the ones that needed to be told: right verses wrong, and that even the meek can go on to become something great, even legendary.

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games one of the latest young adult novels that's made a huge splash. The book's trilogy has recently finished up with Mockingjay, and a movie is currently in the works. Young adult fiction is experiencing a boom right now, with a lot of attention paid towards the genre since Harry Potter reinvigorated things over the last ten years. Even more for the books, a number of the recent hits steer very closely towards the speculative fiction side of the house, from Harry Potter to Twilight to the Hunger Games.

Coming highly recommended after I had finished up another YA novel (Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi) last year, Collins' novel is a straightforward affair that is both dark but hitting all of the proper high points for the teen readers that this is steered towards.

Set in an indeterminate future in North America, the United States has ceased to exist, replaced with a nation called Panem after a devastating war. Ruled by an autocratic Capitol, 13 districts around the country have become incredible specialized, providing the nation with specific goods. The story's heroine, Katniss Everdeen, hails from District 12 and becomes involved with a yearly spectacle called The Hunger Games.

Every year, two children, Tributes, are selected at random from each district and brought to the Capitol. There, they are brought into an arena where they fight to the death. Following the creation of Panem, a rebellion from the 13 districts was quashed, and in retaliation, the Capitol demonstrated its grasp over its subjects through the games.

The idea came out of channel surfing as Collins flipped between reality television and coverage of the recent Iraq war. The result is a horrific combination of events, where children are forced to kill one another on live television. The book, as the title suggests, covers Katniss's experiences in the arena, as she shoots, stabs and otherwise works to survive, while the wealthy residents of the Capital and other districts watch on.

I've begun to understand the rise of Young Adult fiction over the past couple of years: it's a very clear-cut way to get across a story with very clear morals. Working at the bookstore years ago, it's easy to ridicule the housewives who came in gushing about Twilight, but I get it now: the books aren't complicated in the stories that they tell, but have a number of interesting teaching points throughout.

The Hunger Games very much falls into this category. Where I expected some elements of ethics on killing your fellow tributes, this wasn't as clear cut as I'd anticipated. Katniss teams up with her fellow District 12 tribute towards the end, and allies herself with others with mutual goals. The result is a story of trust, friendship and quite a bit of violence.

The story wanders at points - like the character, I lost track of time in the story as she wandered back and forth, trying to survive, and the prose leaves a bit to be desired at other points. But, the tale is a fantastic dystopian story that is both exciting and engaging, and while I'm not sure that I'll get to books 2 and 3 at any point soon, it's a story that I'd recommend.

BBC's Outcasts

The BBC has a new show coming out on February 7th by the same people who've produced MI-5, Hustler and Life on Mars, titled Outcasts. The premise is one that reminds me very much several shows, with the seriousness of Battlestar Galactica, the western elements of Firefly and the exploration of the unknown from the novel Coyote. I don't usually get excited over previews and the random plot synopsis, but this time, I'm totally there, all the way through. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM_-eFLJkSE]

I've generally been impressed the BBC's track record with shows. Life on Mars is one of my absolute favorites in the speculative fiction genre, at least when it comes to TV, not to mention Ashes to Ashes and the occasional Dr. Who episode and one-off thing that they do. There's been some missed (Torchwood and Primeval, for example), but on the whole, they know how to put together an interesting story, and carry it through with little baggage that U.S. series seem to have.

The story here intrigues me more than most shows:

Time: our future. A fleet of anti-matter transporters departs Earth for a newly discovered, life-supporting planet in a distant galaxy. Those on board have one simple objective: to build a safe new home on this planet: Carpathia. Led by President Tate and his core team of Stella, Cass and Fleur, they took charge and settled here alongside Expeditionaries Mitchell and Jack. Years on and they are settled in the town of Forthaven on Carpathia, they are confident of their ideals and optimistic about the future. They work hard to preserve what they've built on this planet they now call home, having embraced all the challenges that come with forging a new beginning. But while they try to avoid the mistakes made on Earth, inevitably these heroes cannot escape the human pitfalls of love, greed, lust, loss, and a longing for those they've left behind. As they continue to work and live together they come to realise this is no ordinary planet... Mystery lurks around them and threatens their fragile peace. Is there a bigger purpose at work? Gripping, fast-paced and full of surprises, Outcasts features a cast of established actors and dynamic young stars and seeks answer to the critical question: how do you create a new and a better world?

There's some hints to greater things at work here, much as we saw towards the end of Battlestar Galactica, amongst a bit of a background of some of the modern realistic science fiction that's out there. One preview shows a human jawbone fossilized on Carpathia, and it'll be interesting to see what happens there. In the meantime, it appears that this show falls more into the space opera catagory, of which there's been very little of recently.

Space Opera on television has become a very rare thing: Babylon 5, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Farscape, and more have all had their runs, while Stargate Universe is still out there for at least ten more episodes. A number of science fiction shows out or about to come out seem to be focused more on Earth: Fallen Skies, coming out this summer, is an alien invasion show, while Fringe deals with alternative universes. Terra Nova has time travel and dinosaurs, The Walking Dead: Zombies. This is without counting the random grouping of superhero shows that have just come out. While there's a glimmer of hope for SGU to continue, Battlestar: Blood and Chrome is set to come out later this year, and there's the hope that Slingers will be picked up for a pilot and become a TV series down the line. Outcasts stands out in a very small field just by virtue of its existence, and from the trailers and pilot episode, I've really liked what I've seen with it.

I miss the shows set off on far away worlds, the visuals of a spaceship gliding through space and the various problems that the characters find themselves in. Stargate Universe was a welcome addition for that reason, and a number of the modern and unconventional shows such as SGU, Battlestar Galactica, and Firefly had a great take on how life in outer space would work, and various problems that people out find themselves in and solve.

So, here's hoping that Outcasts will hold up to the initial impressions and previews.

Silent Running

As I've been working my way through old science fiction films from the earlier days of Science Fiction films, I've finally been able to knock another film off the list: Silent Running. A science fiction film that's been cited as inspiration for of some of my favorite recent science fiction films, such as Moon, Sunshine and Wall*E, Silent Running is a fun, but chaotic film that taps heavily into the environmental movement that was so popular during the 1960s and 1970s. The end result is a fun, entertaining flick that's become one of my favorites while I watch a number of the old classics for the first time.

Set far in the future, Earth seems to have become an environmentalist's worst nightmare: plant life has vanished from Earth, with their last remains in space, in large domed spaceships run by American Airlines, the Valley Forge. Lowell, one of four crew members, is the only one who really cares for the plants, and their significance for the human race: he hates the synthetic food that they eat, and hates his crew members for their lack of interest of passion. When the orders come along to blow up the forests and return home, he kills one of his fellow crew members and jettisons the other two into space, remaining with the last remaining dome and three small drone robots.

Alone with the robots, Lowell doesn't seem to have a plan, and sets about reprogramming the drones (which he names Huey, Dewey and Louie, after the Disney characters) and keeping the forest on his ship alive as they drift into deep space. As he does so, the forest starts to die, and his ship is rediscovered. Fearing that his disposal of his fellow crew members will be discovered, and awash in guilt over their deaths, he places the dome under the care of one of the remaining drones, and sends it off into space as he destroys the Valley Forge.

The film is a fun one - it has a tone that reminded me much of another recently viewed film, Soylent Green, which takes on some similar environmental themes for the storyline. It's a story that really holds up well today: Lowell ridicules his co-workers for the junk that they're consuming, noting that it's not real food, and it's an interesting take on how the future might turn our, forty years ago. Indeed, mass extinctions and the destruction of the environment is something that has been featured from time to time in science fiction - Soylent Green is one example, but also other recent stories such as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, Amaryllis by Carrie Vaughn and more recent films such as Moon. With Silent Running cited as a seminal work in the genre, it's interesting to see how forward thinking it was, with a bit of twenty-twenty hindsight.

While the film is good in concept, if fails in story, with a number of plot holes that don't make as much sense. Lowell kills his fellow crewmen in a fit of passion at the destruction of the orbital forests, and escapes through the rings of Jupiter, trying to disguise what happened as a series of malfunctions. But, for a person who seems very intent on pointing out the many things that are wrong with the world (ie, no plant life), his actions confuse the story - blowing up his crew members would be a dramatic act, an ultimate thumbing the nose at the world before taking off with the plants. At the same time, he doesn't seem to realize that plants need sunlight, and the further away one gets from the sun, the more problems a gardener will have with their garden. It's trivial, but it distracts from the story too much.

The highlight for me was not the environmental element or the visuals (which hold up well), but Drones 1, 2 and 3, Lowell's minor companions when he's on his own. Tasked with helping the crew outside, they're small, two legged robots that seem like an early influence on R2-D2 and Wall-E - and I have to say, I liked them just as much as R2, if not more - and after Lowell is injured, he reprograms each to operate on him and perform other tasks, such as playing poker. They're handled masterfully, with minimal voices and subtle movement that conveys that their emotions and apprehension, especially when poor Louie gets blown off the ship, and after Huey is damaged. I'm a little surprised that they don't get as much attention as other robots.

At the end of the day, it's easy to see why Silent Running has provided a bit of inspiration for a number of films: it's a scary film that has some major elements of truth to it: pre-packaged, synthetic food, the loss of life and habitat on the planet, and an apathetic, uninterested population that simply can't bring themselves to care about the consequences of their actions. It's a scary future, one that still could very well happen within our lifetimes.

The Social Network

The creation of Facebook has changed the way that we look at our entire lives. Since 2004, when it was first launched, the site has forced us to reevaluate how we look at privacy, how we conduct ourselves in public and how we interact with our peers. Despite the numerous faults that can be found with the site, it is a remarkable innovation, one that is here to stay.

David Fincher's film chronicling the story behind the creation of Facebook is a fascinating, well paced film that has almost no right to be as good as it is. Penned by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network is almost certainly a dramatic interpretation of what really happened. Events seem to line up as they have in real life, and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerburg has noted that the film is fairly inaccurate, especially when it came to his motivations for starting in the first place. Regardless, it's extremely well written, acted and directed, a film that stands on its own merits, rather than something held up by its own novelty.

Alienating his date, Zuckerburg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) returns to his dorm room where he hacks into Harvard's internal social sites, downloads pictures and puts them together in a site where people are compared and ranked. It's a degrading exercise, but one that's revealing: the site receives over twenty-two thousand hits in a day, taking down Harvard's network, and getting Zuckerburg and his friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), thinking about what to do next. Approached by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to create a social network of their own, Zuckerburg turns around and creates his own site, launching it as an exclusive online site for Harvard and surrounding area students.

The film splits itself between Zuckerburg's college years and several intense questioning sessions by attorneys from the Winklevoss twins and Saverin himself as they try and prove wrongdoing on Zuckerburg's part - the twins claiming that he had stolen their idea, while Saverin was trying to leverage the money that he lost when he was pushed out of the company. The juxtaposition shows how much things could change within a few short years.

The Social Network isn't about Facebook, or really even about the creation of the website. The film's true themes come from the title, and are ultimately an intense character drama between Zuckerburg, Saverin and Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker and their own interactions. Facebook has become an intense issue in the public lime-light, and the film's creators did well to frame their film by the people involved. The Social Network is ultimately the relationship between Zuckerburg and his friends, and ultimately the rest of the world. It's complicated, as Zuckerburg and Saverin face off against one another, backed by their lawyers, and the tension is incredible.

This is a film that is far more compelling than it should be. It's a film about a couple of geeks, working to push against the established social order that they've been told to work in. Zuckerburg has gone on to upend how we interact with one another. Parker notes that while his first company, Napster, was sued and killed by the music industry, it completely changed how people looked at buying, distributing and listening to music. The film also plays up the conflict between the Winklevoss twins - rowers who would go on to the Olympics - as the jocks against a diminutive Zuckerburg who beats them at their own game. Coders are selected by a complicated coding marathon and drinking game that wouldn't seem out of place for a stereotypical sports team - minus the computers and technobabble about what they're coding. Facebook, like some of the other earth changing events and creations in human history, was created by the nerd. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Albert Einstein and numerous others can likely count Zuckerburg amongst their numbers for the changes that he's pushed upon people, for better or worse.

The Social Network, while likely a fictionalized account of true events, is a fascinating take on the people behind the creation of Facebook, and I'm sure that there's some truth behind parts of the story. As someone who's used the website since it began, when it was invite only with a college e-mail address, it's astonishing to think about how much things have changed - there was certainly a nostalgic pang seeing the original masthead and layout. Up for several Oscars, Fincher's film has received a lot of critical acclaim, all of it well deserved for this highly relevant and thoughtful movie.

The Future of Publishing?

SF Signal has an excellent topic this week for their mind-meld, a gathering of experts in the field who commentate on a common subject. This week's topic looks to the future of a field that's central to the speculative fiction genres: Publishing. The responses are well worth looking at and reading over, especially for those who are interested in writing professionally, or for fans who are wondering where their fix will be coming from next.

The short answer consensus seems to be that publishing, books, stories and everything isn't going anywhere, but the field will see major changes in book distribution and creation, not to mention the publishing rights of authors. eBooks and dedicated readers seem to have thrown most everyone through a loop as they scramble to figure out just what's going on, and trying to make their best guesses on where the industry will step next, which is in turn dependent on a number of factors outside of the publishing industry's control.

To be fair, books have had their own share of issues throughout recent memory, although the challenges here are a bit bigger. The 1980s and early 1990s saw a massive amount of consolidation of bookstores as major chains worked their way into existence, causing quite a lot of soul searching and closings of independent bookstores as a result. The bigger stores seem to have met their match as Amazon.com roared past them, because it could do things differently, and better than a physical bookstore. With eBooks, the troubles come as established markets find that their models for selling books is potentially undermined by an entirely new way to sell books, bringing in a number of new challenges and opportunities to the publishing world.

Every single online conversation about books seems to turn to the eBook market, with people coming down on two sides: "I LOVE EBOOKS, I READ SO MANY OF THEM!" and the "I LIKE THE SMELL OF PAPER AND THE WEIGHT OF THE BOOK IN MY HANDS!" crowds, both of which miss a major point: all that the platform does as function, whether physical or a computer, is content delivery. The same book exists in both realms, and as Lou Anders points out: "... it's always been about the content, not the delivery mechanism." Publishers have an extra option that just didn't exist in any major way, and they are slowly waking up to the possibilities that electronic books will allow. The popularity of eBook readers is a good thing, I think.

The move to electronic formats does allow for a split between hard-copy 'traditional' books, and eBooks in ways that really hasn't been touched on yet. When I attended ReaderCon, one presenter, Leah Bobet, noted that there are impressive things that electronic books can do: interactive features, links to relevant content and ways to read books in very different ways than we can now. Cheryl Morgan notes the very same thing this time around: essentially special features that can get tacked on to what you're reading. With that line of thinking, books are poised to change a lot: multiple editions of the bigger books, with stripped down text for those who just want the story, or special features for the top of the line products. Some books already have these sorts of incentives: interviews with authors, reading guides, and previews of upcoming novels.

Despite this, I don't think that hard-copy books will go away any time soon. There is enough market demand for hard-copy books, and the medium has had a long, long head start on the eBook revolution, which is still working its way through its early days. EBooks are certainly popular, and will grow to be even more so as the market shakes out the big obstacles. I suspect that we'll see the end of dedicated eBook readers such as the Nook and the Kindle (sorry, Barnes and Noble and Amazon), in favor of multiple use devices such as the iPad, or dedicated eBook readers such as the Sony Digital Reader as a universal format is adopted by stores and publishers alike. The ability to read a book on multiple devices, I think, will be more important that the actual proprietary hardware that we have now. This is a lesson that online magazines are finding, and I suspect that while the Kindle has a good run right now, it'll become a bit more open and accepting of other formats.

While e-readers might become a bit more open, I can see exclusivity remaining, becoming a major factor in how stories are sold, coupled with how chain stores might try to stay in the game. A couple of years ago, Borders released an exclusive book through their stores. I was a bookseller at the time, and this was a book that had been pushed quite heavily, and through the company's efforts, it did fairly well, although I can't figure out what the title of the book was or who the author was. The experiment doesn't seem to have been as much of a success, because I haven't seen anything like it since then (although I'm not quite in the same loop as I was before), but I think it's an idea that has merit, and that it'll be experimented with again.

There's little doubt that major book sellers are having their own issues at the moment: too much stock, not enough of it selling, and it's likely that we'll see Borders fail in the next couple of years, if not sooner. Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I suspect, are going to be far better off because of their own efforts to integrate web sales and ebook readers earlier than their competitors. These are large organizations that nobody wants to see fail: the loss of a major bookstore is something that authors and publishers don't want, because of the potential to reach a large number of loyal customers, and the companies themselves don't want to die off. The chain stores are here to stay, I suspect, despite the swan songs of their demise, simply because they have the potential to sell a lot of books to a lot of people. They might be facing some major changes, but I would doubt that we'll see the current companies die off, or at least not without some sort of replacement in one form or another.

If there's anything that the Kindle has demonstrated, it's that exclusive things do work: the Kindle's done quite well, and where Borders has attempted their own exclusive things, I would predict that the major bookstores, in their efforts to stay relevant, will move a bit into the publishing field. It makes a bit of sense: they have experience with the market and the books that they know work. The only piece that's missing is that they are only an outlet. Moving to begin selling their own books (Barnes and Noble already sells its own editions of a number of classics) would allow them to drum up a reason for people to come to their stores. Imagine if an author such as John Grisham or a similarly well-exposed author came out with a book that only sold at Barnes and Noble, published exclusively through them: it couldn't be sold through Amazon.com or other competitors, and would get a fair amount of visibility through internal marketing and so forth. I can imagine that there would be a bit of anger from other authors, author groups and other stores, but large groups of dedicated readers would buy them. The trickle-down effect would be slow, with other authors jumping on if it works, and other bookstore chains copying the idea, slowly opening it up to more and more people, splitting the market up a bit, and giving the chains a bit of an edge over juggernauts such as Amazon.com.

There are a lot of assumptions here: the internet might not be the same, and as some people noted, the idea of net neutrality is slowly dying and the internet is changed radically. I don't know that it'll be as bad or as better than what people are imagining now, but major changes in how the internet works will spell major changes in how books are sold: another reason why physical books might remain longer than expected from those already writing their obituaries.

But, as has been stated already: the mediums in which books are sold are merely content delivery systems that bring the stories to the reader. Regardless of how that plays out, there is plenty of demand for books, and as such, I've little doubt that there will need to be in place editorial and distribution elements for the serious efforts. One thing is for sure: we're in for an interesting ride.