My Love of Chip: Samuel Delany

 

  While "Hard sci-fi" was about reliving the Second World War but with improved Nazis, faster and faster ships, and exploding, could be bigger explosions, technologies, Samuel Delany was writing moving beyond all that. He is talking about multi-generational travel between the stars and wars that killed centuries-old civilizations but lasted for only minutes. His discussion about the changes in language as well as grasping the the transference of how we talk about things from one generation to another, despite some very coherent talk about physics-bound science fiction conventions, was labeled "Soft Wave."
   I, as an avid science fiction reader reading, in my 6.1th Decade of age, have noticed a tendency for Hard Science Fiction to be blurts of the hip techno-babble proselytizing about the most ridiculous advancements in technology and militarism. Those prophesies have turned not only to be outdated by stuff like micro-chips and "social" networks within the span of four years since the works' publication. Meanwhile this author's, Delany, in case you forgot whom I was talking about, speculative fiction doesn't, at least to me, get stale. 
   First book, novella really, is Babel 17 . This is not out of any sort literary dominance. This was the first work that I read by the person. I'm not a literary scholar, I've just read a whole bunch of books. More than a fair share of those were paperbacks. This work introduced me, an already bilingual person, to the effects of language on those subscribing to Literacy Equals Language. I walked out of that dime-store book much wiser about the salesmanship that goes into the cultures around us.
   I went on to read about a billion books. While doing so, there was Delany's shorter works. His novels rocked me. The shorter works inspired me. Through all of those works, I learned about stuff like the speed of light, while more "Hard Core" sci-fi authors scrawled pages about more and better tanks, sex but with time travel, and "good" cultural warfare.
   While sci-fi booksellers will always have classifications, as a science fiction reader, I recommend not taking them at their word. Authors like Samuel Delany are standing proof of the fallacy of that. 

Every Time at the Table: Halloween 2025

   
   While previously planning to do Wobble session last night, around Wednesday (October 29th) I suddenly wanted to composed a Hammer horror film-style adventure. So by the next day, I scripted a quick scenario, what I'd call a  "room-crawl"  with a mystery to solve. So I announced "Assault on Castle Vulgarr" on Thursday and welcomed any player back to Blegovia (17th-19th themed horror).  Now I expected a couple regular players would be showing up, but this apparently excited a couple others.  Imran, from India, as well as S.  Dresser, an old friend from New Hampshire days, decided to show. Iron Curtis showed up wearing his best dress to top things off. 

So the main roles were the Inspector, the Fortune-teller, and the Scientist. Through random draws, Dresser was the Scientist; Peryton (Robin) was the Inspector; and Curtis had to fill the role of the Fortune-Teller. Imran was there to watch. Curtis's fortune-teller looked awesome in their purple dress. Later Kal Luin (Brett) showed up ready to play. I didn't bother with character creation, he was an interloping English consultant arriving to tell everyone already in the game how things should be done.

So we started out with a strange murdering of multiple people, a family, so the Police-Watch of the city couldn't just file it away. The Inspector found those closest to the deceased, namely the Fortune-teller, and, after concluding that they were not guilty, arrested them. A decision not only historically accurate, Robin's decision was wonderfully apt to 'get the party together.' She was about to arrest Dresser's Professor, when the English-Consultant, played by Brett, showed up. The combined PCs not only coped, they made the story rather awesome.

Things ended up at Ostruk Vulkarra, A vampire was defeated after all but one of the Party was slain. I was surprised that any Player-Character survived. 

The State of TV Science Fiction 2025: Foundation

One of the points in my life is where being successful means watching TV sci-fi  to give my opinion on the shows happening regardless of where the shows happen to be streaming. Now I don't mean what we'll kitchen table sci-fi, where a camera and one to four famous actors gets to equivocate about society's belly button for two, maybe three, seasons about time travel or hot chicks that are genetically modified to beat up battalions of faceless people because oligarchy or something. No. I want costumes. I want spaceships. I want striking visuals. A bit of soap opera doesn't hurt.

I actually gave the Apple Corporation an email address to watch their production of Issac Asimov's Foundation series. At least the first three seasons. I did this mostly out of guilt after watching five episodes of the first season from a friend that revels in bootlegging this sort of thing like two years ago. The 14$ that I spent was well worth it. I still haven't found the cancellation button anywhere to try to stop paying the named company without replacing my debit card. I actually have stopped the account from charging me, but not being able to just cancel a subscription for a while-- Fuck off phish-mining. 



Say what you will about "the Book versus the Movie" the TV series, is not afraid to be creative. You-Tube's asshole critics will be on about "It's not like the books!" or "gender-swapping!", they're missing out on how a sci-fi series has spaceships, androids, and explosions. This criticism ignores how boring the books, held to these critics breasts, were. 

So far the series has invented an empire that clones its most perfect ruler. Who needs elections when you have perfection? And then space elevators and brain transfers into machines happen without much of a mention. No. Indeed that brain transfer has its own subplot. This is all on top of the written material of the books,



Godsheads bless the books. The books that have to be mentioned because film and TV producers need titles and plots from the past to fund doing shows (or films) like this. Is it good? Yes. The show though keeps being compared what Issac Asimov might've envisioned. I'll add that it would have been filled with schlock and pretense.

This is some sphere romance presented not trying to explain anything but the passions of its characters. Decent sci-fi doesn't need much more. 

Andor: Well that Surprised Me

 

Finally some Star Wars in the damn TV show

So to fill out a Saturday night, I went ahead and binged season 2 of the show. My summation of Andor during the first season was something like, "A World War Two movie with androids but made in Albania".  It wasn't Star Wars but it was influenced by the makers of that movie franchise as much as it was a homage to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in fashion tastes. Then there were the prison episodes, which weren't as much The Grand Illusion (1937) as they wanted to be, so they ended up being like sitting in prison while watching them. Boy did the spaceships, prison breaks, and battle scenes suck. While I love a good kepi or toupee, I was not impressed with my first take of the show.

The opening of season 2, which figured almost nothing but a TIE fighter then, elsewhere, a princess's wedding plans, caught my attention. It was 8pm when I started. I promised to work a few hours the next day. I did not mind staying up to after 3am watching it. Okay. Okay. I had no where to be until after noon. Still I was caught up and swept away into the story.

 The hat collection was put into the back ground, but the 40s Italian naval uniforms made up for it. Both yarns were tying disparate parts of the narrative together showing the fiber and composition of Star War's  rebellious bits and pieces. The interactions of the Characters were full of their personal opinions and could be judged as right or wrong, but we, as the viewer, were privy to background information that showed them to be handling what they were given not paths that they were following. Friends warned me about the pacing of the first episodes, but slow presentations don't bug me in film and TV-- it kind of makes the media worth watching compared to most its content.

By the end of the shows, I'd given up on looking for where the influences were from or what Easter Eggs were there for fandom. I wanted to see where the Characters, the surviving ones, were going. Knowing that this is the prequel to Rogue One, it's all a half-hearted tragedy. I still won't mind making a long weekend of this series, Rogue One, and Star Wars (the movie) a future event. Lucas's prequels don't make me want to do that sort of thing.

A King Kong of a TV mini-series. A Godzilla of a Star Wars prequel.

So Dune, the Newest

 

As "franchises" go, this has been a rewarding one. I read the book in 1981. I watched the David Lynch production in 1984. I caught the Sci-Fi Channel's take in Aughts. I read all of the Herbert Dune books then. I tried the professionally published fan fiction afterwards and dropped it quickly. Now I have Denis Villeneuve's two movies. Watched the most recent of the iterations last night. I made a whole afternoon out of it even. You'll have to as well.

It has everything I expected, AND more it was more good than bad.

The casting is spot on, and I say this as someone that has read the books. Okay now that I said it, I should go on and clarify. Timothee Chalmet, born in NYC BTW, works as "Paul" so well, every guy below the age of 40 trying to not have a chip on their shoulder will relate. Whatever Zendaya is (I'm sure she has a full name somewhere), she takes the Muadid's squeeze to places where a real woman would actually go, as opposed to the book. Paul Baptiste as Rabban the Harkonnen is a piece of bronze set in glass for perfection in the role he was playing-- you want brutality based on overall insecurity? You got it.-- Josh Brolin as the uncle that we all wished we had? He's so there. And everybody else highlighted was great as well, complete with a lot of characterization, but the scripting didn't do them justice. More on that later.

The design of the overall work is almost beautiful. Repressed women from the Baltic in the 12th Century to most of the Muslim world today will look admiringly at the cocoons that the actresses that represented any female that had procreated already in the tale with awe. Once again, dudes wearing armor seem to be wearing the most ineffective protective gear ever. The most disappointing aspect of the artistic direction is the failure of producers to show why anyone would really want to, or not, live on Arrakis, err Doon, err "Dune, desert planet." Pools of water with dusty gatherings and a lot of shadow is a city block, not 3/4s of a planet.  That said, riding the giant sand worms of the planet as a mass transport system was rather believable.

The political and war dynamics depicted in the movie are as weak as it is in the book Dune. Something about a parliamentary of monarchs system subverted by an autocrat, their elected emperor, happening within that parliamentarian system using a faction of mean baddies. There is an awesome tactical combat scene. While it is meant to show that Villenuve's hyper-accurate understanding of managed violence, it is bonding moment between Paul and Chani despite the "hyper-detail." Overall though, the "warring" depicted in this take of the book is silly. Still the ornithopters as the solution between helicopters and airplanes shows why Herbert understood speculative science while writing fiction. If anyone can make sense of the movie's last part battles, please let me know. The Character dialogue did explain the premise changes nicely though.

Short points in the tale can only be blamed on the author, Frank Herbert. The bad part of the movie were the bad guys. There is the mean baddies, the Harkonnen. Then there is the two-faced Emperor which is supposed to be evil. The Director of this movie gets that and shows part of this point.

Big meanies get defined beautifully. Okay the Harkonnen of Gedi Prime are the worst of humanity. This translates as something akin to, umm Star-Finnish (FUCK YOU HERBERT). They live on a world where the suns themselves bleach humanity from its own selves. Pale, but fuckable apparently. The astrological and autocratic women, Jezzi-Jizz-habitat, not beholden to the autocrat, come up with designs trying to make an off-spring which they'll hate anyway when it shows up. In the end something about scheming women with a master plan covered up by the peanut butter-covered mystery box laced with grape jelly-flavored betrayal. Nothing but trouble, I'm sure.

The evil of Emperor though is stillborn. While Christopher Walken is the most powerful of any of the Padushah Emperors I've seen to date, he is just not given enough to do. He appointed Duke Leito AtTreesandWater to Planet Dune.Oil.and.Cocaine to replace Finns Gone Bad for some reason. His Supreme-ness then betrays his pick using his own roid rangers from heavy gravity to help out. I think he then posted a letter of confession in the mail to somewhere he was sure it'd never be found. Suddenly a white-bread messiah, the son of the betrayed tree-hugger Duke, comes forward and calls for hollywoodwar.Why that Herbert and Villeneuve have so much contempt for this Character could have been a bit more detailed. 

Overall, the movie is a Godzilla of a sci-fi movie. I'll still have to watch New Village's, my nickname for Villenueve, two movies about Dune together. I hear there there might be more movies about Dune coming. I'll go see them.

Flash Gordon: New Takes Don't Hurt

A great take!

Science fiction movies are not stagnating. It's not the reboot that is turning movies into tripe.  Reproducing these works is like new takes on Shakespeare, the artistic vision and thematic direction of each production allows the artists involved to get comfortable with epic scope without becoming Tolstoy or an abject failure. I bring this up after seeing so many YouTube critics are weary of basically anything J.J. Abrams and Marvel or Star Wars from Disney and most of post 2000 Star Trek. Me too, Brother and Sister, I am developing a bias against big money movies with catered-to internet fan bases. As for long standing stories, the reboot of a classic tale of speculative fiction whether it be a TV series or film, it is like fresh water from a nearby mountain stream that freshens up things up in a landscape well known the a person. Flash Gordon while fully trademarked and copyrighted by its owner Hearst Communications, is a cycle of speculative fiction that is right up there with John Carter of Mars, War of the Worlds, and even Frankenstein, in my opinion, in terms of potential and impact on imaginative stories to be told. As much as I bemoan the stagnation of fantastic culture losing its creative spark, I can't say I mind reboots for the most part.

My pick for Thun the Lion-Man in Flash Gordon: Disney Defeated available 2027

I still need to clarify this. TV shows shouldn't be rebooted or turned into motion pictures. That is at least without the original casts. If one wants to do an homage, do one; do not revamp a decent piece of culture into hardcore camp. Big name actors in movies "introducing new audiences" to "old television classics" from twenty years ago in a 90-120 minute with format-scripted modern changes should be left to realm of parody.

It's been a long ride with Flash for me. My first introduction to the Flash Gordon cycle was in Germany about '74. It was in English but had been produced in Berlin from the 50s with Steven Holland. I can't remember Ming or Mongo ever being mentioned. There was something about Pluto or Charon and a space-based FBI--kind of boring and hokey. In the States in like 1979, I started watching an animated series Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All on Detroit's Channel 20 (I think). There I started learning the classic Ming Vs. Earth saga. Someone drove me to the mall to catch the 1980s sexual chocolate take on Flash Gordon with Freddy Mercury as Ming (wink) and some dude with dyed hair as Flash's stunt double-- still a good movie, a lot of hot chicks and hawk-men.  When I got my license, I'd be introduced to the serials by late night TV on CABLE at my sister's apartment. It was all so cool. Throughout the years, I'd read works from the 30s and still be like "Wow. That is kewl." Most recently, I've been taking a look at comic books, mostly diminishing any respect I ever had for comic book producers and writers. Today, I catch a comic strip, which I think is net-based, but the writing is great. It is even adding to the vast lexicon of my favorite Science Fiction heroes and villains yet. It has been anything but a straight line, but now that I know the chronology of releases, it's only gotten better. I absolutely adore the CBC's take on Flash Gordon from 2007-- got problems with it? I'll fight you.



Indeed, with this "franchise" it still evokes excitement when I hear about the next take. I am much happier with my varied experiences with Flash Gordon, since the 1970s, than I have been with, say, Star Wars or Star Trek. I suppose it's because the milieu of this spaceship-laden folklore isn't based off of internet searches of vocabulary to determine what is the next popular thing, but has a long catalog of themes and ideas already discovered awaiting interpretation.

The Batman 2022: About Time

 Okay I am turning into an old chimpanzee. For all thoughts and musings about this or that, when it's new and shiny I just love it. For all my love of Zach Snyder's Batman, over the years after rewatching them over and over again, I couldn't help thinking, 'There is just too much going on.' Stop trying to get three storyarcs into each movie to show that the film producers got Batman. This film seemed to get that as well. While there was a lot going on, there is a lot that isn't.

I enjoyed that the city of Gotham gets defined more and not reinvented. In case you don't know this in the some old DC material back in the late 80s, the cities of Gotham and Metropolis are shown on a map. they actually correspond to cities in the real world. Gotham, New Jersey is on the east coast of the state. If one looks at a map of that city and turns it upside down and combine it with Ocean City, NJ, wallah; Gotham City, DC-verse. Yes that is how much of a fanboy that I am of Batman. In the movie past-takes on the details of Gotham are not discarded, but built upon. Allowances to the Joker movie is made with loose ties of a particular gang. There is even a bit of the infrastructure is hinted beyond a central water line following a subway to Wayne Towers making the Aftermath scenario that every Batman take has to have since the 90s more understandable than earthquakes or holding a city hostage by blowing up bridges with the threat of a nuclear bomb by inconceivably powerful terrorists. So the metroplex itself isn't just a metaphor for city-life and degeneration of true American values. One starts to get a grasp of how big cities and their peoples are entrenched in their environs as much as other people anyplace else.

Speaking of not reinventing, did I mention that the movie doesn't have the origin story. It builds upon it that origin story but doesn't Spiderman itself in the foot. Heck this movie might, could be related to the flix released in previous years. It assumes that the folks watching the movie don't need an explanation as to why a man is dressing up in a silly costume in a world where sometimes villains shoot lasers out of their eyes. In superhero movie sense, it allowed to viewer to smooth over the bumps in continuity from movie to movie like normal people do with, say, James Bond movies. When Disney does that everyone is like "so natural." When DC does it, everyone cries at the injustice of it all.

The characterization, overall, is rather awesome. So while Robert Patterson can't be bothered to wear anything but a tee shirt, because he works out and isn't terribly handsome to begin with, he makes a decent young Bruce Wayne. His Batman works, because he does have to hide behind the mask to show any sort of grim determination as opposed the depths of his eyes with their confused self-discovery look that teen idols tend to have. I could understand why the folks of Gotham liked the guy but couldn't figure out that he was "THE Batman".  Patterson's Billionaire-playboy-sad orphan's relationships with Alfred Pennyworth and the Cat Woman had a lot of Chemistry, not just chemistry, whether he was wearing a mask or not.

The villains hit on all cylinders. The Penguin was a people reader and as hard as Batman when seeing the failings and strengths of those around him. Plus he had Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum working the door. I did not like the Riddler's gimp outfit, just put the Court of Owls in there already, but as a character-arc, it worked. I am falling in love with John Turturro as a "that guy" in movies as well the lead in others. He's in his prime and knows how to read his part as Carmine Falcone.

As the cop fetish goes, the movie stays consistent with both Hollywood tropes and what we expect from law enforcement in a world where folks have to dress up in costumes to right the wrongs of the world. They're tough and smart, but they're dealing with the Batman and supervillains.  Lieutenant Gordon, was angled just right. Jeffery Wright is growing on me. 

They TOYS are awesome. Motorcylces, Batmobile, the Batarang, and the utility belt all used just enough to show it is all about the bling helps when it comes to higher purposes.

 Overall, a Loch Ness Monster, on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla. I hope Zoe Kravitz doesn't hate me for not focusing on her very good portrayal of Selina Kyle.