Saturday 30 November 2013

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Whoops, today's book is actually from 1983, but I just love the cover so much! It's funny how every decade has it's own tell-tale style, but the author, Ardath Mayhar, started writing science fiction in the 70s and perhaps that's when she found her own...

Khi to Freedom





For Hale Enbo, servitude promised freedom! He loved his life as a planetary scout, indentured to the alien Ginli, travelling throughout the universe, finding and befriending the myriads of intelligent life forms.

Until he discovered what his masters were really after.

Until he found one of his new friends staked out on the Ginli vivisection table...









Eeek! I'm keeping this one out to read because it looks very promising. In case you're thinking that Ardath Mayhar is the most made up name ever, it's not. It does fit the SF&F checklist though: punny title, fantastic sounding name, exotic female alien life forms. Cover artist Steve Hickman even managed to sneak a breast in there. Really though, this is the kind of cover that makes an art teacher swell with pride. At least one of my students was paying attention. he or she might think. I love how the arms of Hale, alien and the tree match, just as the two also match with her tail. Warm colours advance, and a little yellow and purple make some interesting browns. See, I paid attention too in class!

Thursday 28 November 2013

Escape From The Television Trap

Last week while I was sick I didn't actually watch any daytime TV because we don't have a television service. As I braved a trip to the mall to find some Emergen C, I cheerfully waved away a nice young man trying to sell the latest digital TV thingamabob from the phone company.

"We kicked the habit!" I chirped at him and a small part of him probably died inside as I walked on by. Such is the way of colds - filters are down along with your immune system. But almost six years ago we gave up our satellite TV. It was getting hard to justify spending $70 a month on the three channels we watched - Discovery, Teletoon and Animal Planet. Even a PVR and skipping commercials couldn’t keep us interested - TV piled up like laundry in a corner.

Consuming media had become a chore!

Sometimes it takes people aback, as if shunning TV makes one an instant snob, but the fragmented state of today's media means that something has to give. When I was a kid, I couldn't imagine giving up TV, even if it was peasantvision's eleven channel world (twelve, if you understood French, which we didn't). TV was the only currency the nerdiest child had in the playground, and missing an episode of Full House or Perfect Strangers was practically spending a night in Squaresville. Occasionally the local paper would run a story about some cute kid holding a fan of crisp new bills - their reward for giving up the idiot box. It's just a lesson that took a long time to learn, I guess.

Of course these days we have a better distraction, the Internet, and we pay $60 a month for that. At one of my past temp jobs, a visitor to the office asked me "what I did all night" if TV wasn't on the menu. Uh...read? Exercise? Visit my friends? Spend time with my husband? The rare time that we do watch TV has made it special again - commercials are actually interesting instead of annoying. But I look at it this way...

What am I gaining?

Time!
$840 a year!
Peace and quiet!
Hours to read!
More movies!

And suddenly the advantages start to outweigh being caught up on the latest thing to chat about around the water cooler. TV is such a constant presence, but one can grow to appreciate it's absence, like so much stuff from the basement.

Now if you really want to know how people in the past thought TV was a trap, watch this 1936 movie called Trapped by Television. It's not much different from the way we try to imagine technology in our lives today.

Tuesday 19 November 2013

Tea for Tuesday

It's so strange - for the past ten years or so a big fall cold strikes me down. Cools my jets! Relegates me to the couch to watch daytime TV! It happens so predictably that there's no avoiding it. But, I'll settle for this little fall cold. Besides the modern miracle that is Nyquil, I'm thankful for Cold 911 made by the good people at David's Tea. It's not just peppermint tea, it's peppermint tea with juniper berries, eucalyptus and orange peels. It is so delicious and satisfying. Time to make another pot!

Cold 911

Saturday 16 November 2013

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Fending off a cold this week as well as the craft sale craziness, so here's a book that doesn't need too much explanation except...

Spaaaaaaaace Pope!




I bet the artist had a lot of fun with this one! Now back to chugging Cold 911 from David's Tea :-D

Saturday 9 November 2013

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

To be honest, I'm not sure why I picked today's cover. It reminds me of one of those times in art college where myself or a classmate had to pin up a particular dud of a work. Either the class struggled to find something to say or the student stumbled through a poorly thought out explanation. Which is how I, as humble blogger, feel about...

Twilight at the Well of Souls


Twilight at the Well of Souls


This is the way the world will end...

The rift in the fabric of space was fast approaching the Well World, and time was running out. Troops all over the planet were gathering for the final battle.

Nathan Brazil and Mavra Chang somehow had to reach the Well of Souls in time to save the universe before any of the hostile natives managed to kill them.

At best, a difficult mission. At worst, impossible - especially since there was a price on Brazil's head and many would-be claimants! For Brazil, the difficult was but the work of a moment - the impossible would take a little longer!



Well, it has orange and blue. It has a sphere...am I supposed to be looking down at a pit or is something exploding? Another thing I remember from art college is my crazy drawing teacher who occasionally said one sane thing for every five insane things. One of her sane tips was that artists can't always be standing by their work, ready to deconstruct it for every viewer. Same goes for books that want to be sold. If I didn't know who Jack Chalker was, I would totally judge this book by the cover and pass.

Thursday 7 November 2013

Tales of the Unexpected

It's the rattle of the ticket machine that gets my attention, and the way the man pokes fruitlessly at the display. I had gone into Yuppietown to get dandelion leaves from the organic market, and now I was waiting for the train, dandelion leaves, raspberries and oranges cradled in my arms because I was too cheap to buy a reusable bag, and my wallet tucked under my left armpit. It's never just the one thing! Jill Potenti is sympathetic to people held hostage by the whims of machines, so I ambled over and asked, "Is it not giving you a ticket?"

"Nope."

"Hmm..."

"It says push any button. I am doing this right, aren't I?"

It's been ages since I had to buy a ticket, but we walk through the process, just in case. "Durn thing took my three dollars!" His accent is amusing; I would have thought he was from Ontario if he didn't say Nova Scotia. He has a wide. friendly face and a bushy mustache.

"I would just call the transit info line and maybe they'll send you more tickets."

"This is great. I only been here a few days. Not that I want to be. My brother is dying."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Jill Potenti is also sympathetic to those suffering the whims of fate.

"Yeah, I was gonna go see him. He's at the F----------. Don't know how I'm gonna get there."

"Well, I would just go one stop over. Get off at the mall and tell the bus driver the machine ate your money."

"They told me to get off at L----- and catch a bus."

"Oh no no. There's no buses that stop there. You can catch two buses to the hospital from the mall. But it's not just getting there. It's getting back. One bus has the same number, but it goes in different directions. If you take it in the wrong direction, like I did, you go all over the northwest. But I would do that, when my dad had a stroke, that's what I did."

My transit knowledge impresses him; the train arrives just as I was going give more advice so he won't suffer the whims of a fickle transit system. I expect him to get on with me, but he doesn't. "You have a really nice day, thanks, you're a real sweetheart." He touches me on my left arm and smiles before he goes.

I shuffle over on the train, and then the panic hits me after the door closes - I was just the world's worst mark. I squeeze my arm and my wallet is still there. I have a sudden urge to check my pockets even if it means oranges rolling all around the train. What was it about his casual, friendly manner that now makes me think it was a smooth, practiced pantomine? Why do I now think he was patiently waiting for me to say "Oh, here's three dollars I can give you," at so many points in the conversation? And instead all I could give him was free advice! Duh!

Mr. Potenti rolls his eyes as I recount the conversation for him. "Riiiiiight." he says more than once. Grifting three dollars from transit riders probably adds up fast. Thinking the worst of the fellow makes me feel guilty, because I like thinking the best of people. Maybe he is new in town. Maybe he really does have a dying brother. And goodness knows those ticket machines break down a lot. But maybe too, when I mentioned that my dad had had a stroke, he changed his mind, humoured me for a few minutes and moved on to find someone that would make him feel less guilty about taking three dollars. I'll never know for sure. I jot down these little stories because they're always fodder for larger ones. The banal can be oddly interesting. Someone once said that writing is forgetting, but for me, writing is remembering, as well as sometimes an exercise in giving the benefit of the doubt.

Sunday 3 November 2013

Ender's Game Review

I came out of yesterday afternoon's showing of Ender's Game with a huge headache and feeling very confused. I even said so to Mr. Potenti. He started to helpfully explain what the entire movie was about. "No, no, no," I protested wearily. "not confused like that, but, confused." You know you have to be pretty confused when you don't even know why! 

The wild differences in reviews made us waffle about wanting to see it. People either love it or hate it. Some said it was close to the book, while others said chunks had been left out. But with nothing else to do but watch the snow fall, we were among the few who trekked out to the theatre - it was only half full. Neither of us have read the book, surprisingly enough, and it isn't hiding on the bookshelf. We went in with low expectations and none of that "Will the book be better than the movie?" baggage.

If you haven't read the book, it's about a young boy, Ender Wiggin, who demonstrates the skill and savvy to be a great battle commander against Earth's ant like enemies, the Formics. The Formics haven't attacked Earth for 50 years, but it won't stop the International Fleet from letting it happen again. Gifted children are trained in the ways of war and it is kind of painful to see them manipulated by a larger war machine against an enemy from a different generation. The world is so joyless for them. Heck, even in the first ten minutes we see Ender brutally beat up a kid who threatened him. Some reviewers have noted that the violence was toned down to make the children more acceptable to audiences. Ender's siblings, Peter and Valentine, flunked out of Battle School for not having the right stuff.

The story of an exceptionally skilled chosen child is a pretty standard one, and there are some that even accused JK Rowling of stealing from Ender's Game. In these stories the reader or viewer enjoys the growth of the character from orphan/deck scrubber/thief to president/admiral/CEO. Maybe that's what was wrong - Ender is quickly promoted through the ranks and there really is no sense of time passing. He comes out on the other end looking exactly the same (in the book it takes years). This is one of the reasons why I don't feel it's a movie for young people - there's no emotional or physical growth to Ender.

I rewatched the trailers, and still don't understand what I saw. There's no romance between Petra and Ender, and to be honest, the two trailers kind of give a lot a way :\. Graff makes the other children hate Ender, but he ends up making friends. Graff says he plans to isolate him, but he never seems to be that way - there's no sense that the geeky Ender is lonely, just a loner.

The special effects, set designs and battle scenes were pretty good, although not really thrilling. One could almost wait for the DVD because there aren't any eye popping effects. The design of the Formic ships were cool, although the constant blue grey tone of Battle School felt oppressive at times. Maybe that's what gave me the headache! The cast was stellar and has too much talent to fail, although Ben Kingsley gets such a small role. The cast was racially diverse and Asa Butterfield was simply stellar as Ender. And although Harrison Ford played Hyram Graff lazily, he pulled off grumpy old warmonger pretty well. It would seem that Ender's Game is just a technically well done movie without the heart and story to go along with it. The movie starts out decently, but gets choppier and choppier in the second half trying to cram more and more in (and it's 114 minutes by the way). Maybe the reason I felt so beat up by the end was that it was too hard to suspend my disbelief - every scene change and little inconsistency wore my brain down. Despite being an opening weekend, the audience lacked the usual buzz and energy, so maybe it just wasn't me. When Ender triumphs, the feeling just wasn't there in the theatre. I left without feeling entertained, unsure of the point of the film and confused about what it was trying to accomplish. Ender's Game would have been better served by being released in two parts, but no studio would want to take a chance on that. Some have said that it was an unfilmable, but it's just a story not well-told :\

Yesteday I remarked how I was glad that the movie wasn't made in the 80s - it would have looked awful! Today we joked that we don't own a copy of 1984's The Last Starfighter, where a teenager is recruited for his video game prowess. It runs about the same time as Ender's Game, but even with its cheap effects and dorky haircuts, it would seem a vastly superior and well-told story about the militarization of young people.