Someone gave me 2 months of LJ. Thanks, whoever you are! But now I need advice about what I can do with a paid account, because I haven't been around here that long. What should I do?
I, too, paid money to see Nemesis ($20 for two tickets, plus $7.14 for popcorn and a drink, thank you very much New York City). Bits warmed my fangirl heart, but mainly the movie reminded me of why I like Firefly.
1. On Firefly, explosions in space
don't make any noise. And they shouldn't. One small step for science, one giant step for television.
2. On a related note, Z. pointed out that -- absent really good, but stupid, gravitic stabilizers -- what happens when one solid object rams into another of about the same mass in space includes transfer of momentum, so that the second mass would move and not just hang there, getting progressively more crunched by the first. The ramming scene was, however, cool, and so Nemesis gets a bit of a pass on that. Does anyone remember a ST novel (TOS, I think, but TNG is a possibility) which includes a passage something like: "He gave an order rarely heard in the annals of spacefaring: 'Ramming speed!'" There was something about the difference between battle shields and the standard skinshields used by starships to deflect space junk and other small objects, too. I looked for it in my collection, but I think it might have gone in the great purge of '02.
3. Forget the Prime Directive -- everybody else does -- it's dereliction of duty for the captain to be on the away team. Okay, on a diplomatic mission, I see the need to have all the high-ranking officers, but that's an exception. Random planet? Redshirts should comprise the team, not just be in the background to get slaughtered. TNG had some great episodes, but it was often hampered by storylines assuming that no one involved ever read the When I Am an Evil Overlord list. Contrast Mal, kicking the recalcitrant goon into the engines. He's read the list, he is the list.
4. Relatedly, there are other ways to create dramatic tension than to have the captain say, "This is something I've got to do for myself." I devoutly hope that I wasn't the only one in the theater who muttered, "No! No it's not!" This is a fundamental difference in outlook. I love Joss Whedon's universes because bad things happen to good people, and they can't be taken back, and no one's an expert in everything (and when someone tries, it's generally Bad and Wrong, viz. Willow and River), and sometimes Giles has to do what Buffy can't. Joss deals in brutal reality, albeit through metaphors; he's a lot like Stephen King that way, whose memorable answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" in the story "The Moving Finger" was "Because they can." This is a theme running through King's writing; "From a Buick 8" was a particularly heavy-handed version of the same thesis, but it's there in the rest of his work too. In TNG, the captain can say that stupid line because he's not really going to die -- the plot protects him. In Firefly, he
might die -- technically, he
did die -- and so he doesn't act all macho about it. I could go on about how this is related to one's idea of God, and how Whedon's version is a lot kinder to God in that it posits that God isn't killing babies and whales purposefully, but I won't.
In other news, I've been reading Nancy Kress and C.S. Friedman, thanks again to Half.com. I finished Kress's "Probability Moon" and "Beaker's Dozen." The former is the first in a trilogy about World, a planet of humanoids with one major difference from Earth humans: they share Reality, a sort of collective consciousness (though not a group mind) such that only people who share Reality are human and others are completely ignored or even killed. Although certain crimes such as theft are expected, crimes against the body break Reality and cause the perpetrator to be thrust from society until the crime is properly expiated. An Earth expedition, following up a preliminary expedition, comes to World, ostensibly to study the culture but in fact to check out a device in the planet's system that may be a superweapon against the Fallers, an alien race whose attacks are destroying Earth's colonies and threaten Earth itself. And that's just the first few chapters. The book is a good read, though Kress's primary human villain is too much caricature to be really satisfying. I'll read the rest of the trilogy when I can get it cheap.
"Beaker's Dozen" is, as one might expect, a collection of short stories, including one about World. The collection includes the original "Beggars in Spain," a story that stands very well on its own and in my opinion is stronger in this form than in the expanded novel Kress wrote after she got the Hugo (or maybe it was the Nebula). Most of these stories are about manipulating the human brain, or occasionally the human body, to be better or different than it is via evolution alone. Sometimes the mutants are nonhuman, dogs or viruses. Kress's ideas are fascinating and the stories usually satisfying. The cruelty of women, often sisters or mothers, to each other is the other major theme, entwined into the biomanipulation plots. I wish that there had been more positive female relationships in the stories, but that's my preference and not a statement about the stories themselves, which were provocative and generally well-done. The final story, about ballet and children as extensions of their parents, and partially told from the POV of an enhanced dog, was particularly powerful.
"Maximum Light" remains my favorite Kress novel, about a world in which multiple low-level chemical exposures -- go
here for a bit of the underlying science -- have produced a generation of humans with ADHD, developmental delays, and other big problems. The protagonist is a girl who's smart and competent by comparison to her cohort, but who's seemingly incapable of rising to the standards of past generations. She gets caught up in a scheme that violates the bodies of some of the remaining healthy people -- to say more would give away too much. The book is troubling, in part because the main premise is all too plausible.
I read "In Conquest Born" by C.S. Friedman a while ago, and found it well-written and interesting but offputting because of the gender politics of one of the competing human variants. (I should make clear that Friedman didn't endorse those gender politics; it was part of the plot.) Friedman likes to write about opposing worldviews and the difficulty of thinking like the Other, whether the Other is human, alien, or something in between. "This Alien Shore," which I bought because it was a NYT Notable Book, is about a young girl being pursued by a vicious Earth corporation, in a universe in which humanity has subdivided into multiple subspecies. One of the subspecies has mastered the art of FTL travel; everyone else who tries to pilot an FTL ship dies horribly, along with the rest of the ship. This subspecies therefore dictates the behavior of everyone else. Jamisia doesn't know why the corporation is after her, but her brainware is slowly giving her clues as her personality seems to be coming apart. Friedman manages to create a satisfactory universe in a single, though long, book, and doesn't succumb here to the trilogy temptation.
Bolstered by this good experience (and seduced by the Michael Whelan covers, which used to be enough to get me to buy any book so adorned), I tried "The Madness Season," which is my favorite so far. Daetrin is human, sort of; he's old, as in centuries old, and has certain needs that are not shared by normal humans. He's lived under the domination of the alien Tyr for centuries, along with the rest of humanity, until some of his special characteristics are discovered and he's taken from Earth to be studied. The Tyr are a group mind -- with some notable exceptions. Daetrin has to figure out how to survive, which requires him to remember parts of his past he's been all too successful at forgetting. And, perhaps, there's something he can do to liberate Earth. The plot is complicated and engaging, though perhaps a bit weakened by the presence of some aliens with really useful powers at crucial points. The dialogue I most envy:
"What happened with you and Kost?" she asked softly.
I managed to shrug. "He offered me power and glory. I called him an asshole."
"He's very angry."
"I said it well."
I'm about to try Friedman's big trilogy, which sounds a bit more fantasy-oriented, though also based on a "colonization" framework. I'm hopeful. Friedman reminds me a bit of M.A. Foster, who also wrote about human variants, though maybe it's just the Whelan covers that remind me.
Finally, Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Spirit Ring." This one isn't a Vorkosigan novel. Set instead in a past Italy where magic works, the main protagonist is a young girl, daughter of a powerful mage and goldsmith. When her father's patron is brutally slaughtered, she's thrust into intrigue and magic plots and must find her way between survival, revenge, the church's condemnation of many types of magic, and true love. Engaging enough, but I think I like the Vorkosigans better.
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