More Star Wars

Some of you will remember, a while back I did a post about rebooting Star Wars. I cast Jason Statham as Han Solo and Jude Law as C-3PO (both of which I stand by, for the moment. Although I’ve been watching a lot of TNG lately, and that Brent Spiner does an excellent android. When the script allows), and kind of re-thought the characters a bit.

Well, I had a writing fit today, and here’s what came out. Here’s Ewan McGregor and Hayden Panetierre (I realize she’s too old now, but she was young enough in Heroes 1. Anyway, she’s not really who I imagine, but she’s the only person I can think of who’s anything like close). Enjoy:

 

One day. Just one day. She'd been in possession of that damned eccentric lump of scrap metal for one blasted day, and now (mostly due to her own negligence), it had run off. She supposed it could be worse. It could have been stolen outright. In regards to where she knew it had gone, it may as well have been. When a little trashcan-shaped robot wanders into the Jundland Wastes, it's going to get nabbed by Tuskens. It had happened before, but this would be the last time. She would see to that.

This would be the last time one of her mechs "wandered off" into the dessert and was "found" by those filthy Sandies. The absolute nerve of those people. She was furious. It's not like she didn't know where to find them. It wasn't so much the theft itself that bothered her (though the resultant lectures and shouting matches with her uncle did) as the brazenness of it. They knew she could find them, knew that she knew they had taken the little bot. And they knew her. While they could be violent, it was hardly ever that the Sandies set upon someone for little or no reason.

She was already going to catch hell from her uncle over the little thing missing it's first day's work, and for chasing after it on her own. Damned if she was going to let this happen ever again. It was time someone stood up to those thieving man-creatures, and Leia Skywalker would be the one to do it.

In her fury, she had lost herself. Glancing down at her dunerunner's dusty instrument panel, she noticed that she was just a kilometer out from the Tuskens' camp.

She had her lightsaber (properly her father's lightsaber, given to her by Ben Kenobi a year ago, when they had first met) hooked to her right hip and her blaster pistol strapped to her left. Being a Tatooine farm girl of seventeen, she had plenty of experience with the blaster and didn't doubt her ability to wield it in battle (though she had never done before). The blade, Ben had taught her. He had been reluctant at first, but she had eventually worn the old man down until he finally relented. Leia had every confidence that she would leave a smoking pile of sand people bits in the camp when she left.

As her dunespeeder hovered nearer the camp, the Tuskens took notice. There was no alarm. They recognized her vehicle and knew her well. They had no reason to expect anything but the usual whining child that had visited them so many times in the past, insisting (rightly) that they had stolen some piece of her uncle's property and demanding it's return. Sometimes they had complied, but usually not. She was, after all, just a child.

"Not anymore," Leia whispered to herself. After today, when Sandies saw her beat-up old dunespeeder on the horizon, they wouldn't laugh. After today, they would be afraid.

She pulled into the middle of the camp. It was early in the day. The second sun was just over the horizon and several of the creatures were tending a dying fire, no doubt cooking breakfast for the rest of the camp. Several of them were milling about, busying themselves with various tasks. Some (but not many) were just awaking, emerging from their little tents. Many of the sand people noticed her. One of them (one of the ones she had dealt with before) waved to her and called out a decidedly disparaging greeting. She couldn't speak their grunting gargle language, but she understood enough to know when she was being taunted.

She slammed the controls out of alignment, tossed her goggled sun hat into the storage bin beside her and launched herself over the side of the vehicle. She stood at least two heads shorter than the shortest of the Sandies and had been afraid of them (largely for just that reason) for as long as she (or they) could remember. But not today.

The one who had waved at Leia continued to call out and beckon her, amused at her arrival. He stood about forty meters from where she stood. Hand at her belt, she stalked toward him, as her dunespeeder fluttered noisily to the ground. Her slitted eyes and slightly downturned mouth spelled death. By now, several of the other Tuskens were watching the little farm girl approach her antagonist.

She stopped twenty meters from him, working herself up. She began to breathe heavy as the dessert creature continued to crow away at her. Her eyes narrowed further, her hands balled into fists. She committed herself. This has to be done. These parasites can't keep leeching off the farmers. It's not right. Someone has to stop them.

Leia quieted her mind, entering the battle state that Ben had taught her. Time slowed. She became less aware of the fact that her visual world was made up of colliding colors and more aware of the movement of the colors. Here, a spot of red fluttered in the harsh dessert wind. There, a stroke of brown walked out of her line of sight. In this state of other awareness, she always took a moment, not only to adjust to the different rate of time, but also to marvel at her own ability to make it happen. In that briefest of moments, Leia Skywalker blinked and allowed herself a slight grin at the thought of her own magnificence.

She opened her eyes, re-acquiring her target. He was still standing there, in almost the same position he had been before she had taken that brief moment of revelry. Drawing the sword from her belt and activating it, she advanced quickly toward him. She saw the raider's eyes. She saw them grow instantly wide, even as his mocking gesture was only half-finished. Then, just as she was upon him, Leia saw his eyes flicker to her left. Time resumed it's normal course as her blade struck. And froze, seemingly in mid-air.

Unable to mask her shock, the girl let out a cry. The tall man she had intended to strike fell backward and scrabbled away. Her blade hummed and crackled in the air. It took a moment for enough of her rage and shock to drain away before she realized what exactly had happened.

In the instant after she saw her prey's eyes flick away from her, another shimmering energy blade had thrust itself in front of hers. She whipped her head up and saw a grey-haired, almost old man, dressed in the sandy brown tunic common on Tatooine and a darker brown, heavy, hooded cloak. His eyes blazed with, not rage, but anger. The man swung his blade up in front of her, creating a space for his body to step into. She took half a step backwards, more surprised than perturbed, assuming a low guard. They faced each other, matching blue blades of light whirring in the swirling sand.

"Ben?" She almost didn't believe it. How did he get here so quickly? How did he know to get here at all? "But..." She stammered, dropping her guard.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, his morning thoroughly spoiled, glared down the blade of his lightsaber at the girl. "Skywalker," he growled her name. Her father's name. To the old master, all of this was too familiar. He had felt her, in the Force, an hour ago. He knew it was her, not because he had felt her presence before, but because his first instinct was that he was dreaming. Dreaming of the day Anakin Skywalker had butchered a camp full of Tuskens: men, women and children. Even across star systems, he had felt that Skywalker's anguish clearly.

Now, with no worlds between them, he had felt her rage instantly and, as soon as he realized that he was indeed awake, had immediately despaired. He had jumped on the repulsor bike Leia had left at his home (to keep it hidden from her uncle) and sped off in the direction of the disturbance. As he approached the Tusken camp, Obi-Wan had seen her jump out of her vehicle, had seen the tall man-beast taunting her, and willed the bike to go faster. It obliged.

Just as Obi-Wan felt young Leia enter the battle trance, he leapt from the bike, its momentum carrying him nearly the full distance. Just as she swung her weapon downward, he took a single step and thrust his own blade in front of it.

Now they stood, teacher and student (he had never considered Leia his apprentice), facing each other with weapons drawn. For a moment, they just stared at each other. For that long moment, Obi-Wan could feel the rage building in her again. Once again, he felt despair.

With a scream that would curdle the blood of a Krayt Dragon, the young Skywalker rushed at her teacher with a swinging blade. His despair subsided as he easily deflected her wild attack. While she was skilled with the weapon, Leia was attacking him, not with the lightsaber, but with her rage. He could outlast that. He could probably do it without injuring her, though he was prepared to kill her if it became necessary. He wouldn't repeat the same mistake he had made with Anakin: he had allowed that Skywalker to live.

The duel (if it is fair to call it that) lasted the better part of a half-hour. They traded blows, back and forth, Leia attacking furiously out of anger, Obi-Wan intentionally bashing against her guard to tire her.

"Enough of this," Leia muttered to herself. She no longer saw Ben Kenobi, her friend and teacher. She only saw the man with the other lightsaber, standing in her way. She paused for a moment, focusing herself. She made a wild, feinting swing followed by a forceful lunge.

The old man easily saw it coming. raising his sword above his head, he stepped back from her swing, spun away from her lunge, continued to whirl in a full circle. He closed his eyes as he brought his weapon down on the girl's hand to sever it from her arm, and shoved his leg sternly into her mid-section.

He heard her shriek in pain for an instant before his knee slammed the breath from her, heard her weapon sputter to its death, heard her strike the hard sand a meter or two away. With a rising sadness, the old man sensed that the fight was almost over. Almost.

Almost before she even knew she had pulled the trigger, his blade returned her blaster bolt to her left ear. Unable to scream properly, the wind still knocked out of her, she made a hideous retching sound as she writhed on the ground. Moments later, she was back on her feet, coughing, but in a perfect shooting stance (perfect for someone who's shooting at small animals, but less perfect for someone at whom others are pointing their blasters), still pointing her gun at him.

"You... Missed," she managed, between labored breaths.

"Do you believe that?" For half a moment, she looked crestfallen (in addition to looking breathless and bloody), as she realized he hadn't. That he hadn't meant to kill her. He had only meant to dissuade her from continuing the battle. He decided at that moment that the next shot would end her life.

"Leia," he growled at the child. "Have I taught you nothing?" She grimaced briefly, obviously confused.

"You said . . . Jedi . . . guardians of . . . peace . . . And . . . lightsaber . . . weapon of . . ."

"OF JUSTICE!!!" he shouted at the very summit of his lungs, cutting her off as he whirled around to face her. "Not revenge!"

Only now did Obi-Wan realize that he had not injured her. Hadn't removed her hand, at any rate. Half of her father's lightsaber lay, sliced clean, on the ground at his feet. The other half lay covered in blood at hers. Only now did he sense the wheels in her head finally beginning to turn for the first time since his arrival. Her face said she was momentarily disarmed. He turned away. He could make the kill. She was worn out. He could have his blade in her before she could blink. But he sensed something else.

Rather, it was what he did not sense that gave him pause. When he had felt Anakin's rage when he had butchered the sand people, and again when they had battled on Mustafar, there was something else. An additional component that he was only now able to recognize as an addition to rage, rather than a part of it. He was still not sure he could identify it, but it gave him the mildest hope that perhaps this Skywalker was not yet beyond salvation.

Just as he had made the decision not to kill her, his hand was forced.

"Ben . . ." she managed to whimper. He felt Leia's left foot lurch forward, felt the blaster jolt in her hand behind him. Eyes closed in resignation, with only the merest of thoughts, with no conscious effort, he twitched his blade behind his back to deflect the bolt of light. His eyes flashed open.

He spun around swiftly, in shock. The girl still stood, heavy blaster shaking in her small hand, the consternation on her face replaced by an absolute horror. She had not fired. She had only stumbled. But she had seen the flick of his weapon, and knew what it meant. Knew what would have happened, had her finger twitched a hair more than it had.

In half an instant, Obi-Wan extinguished his blade and returned it to his belt. Before Leia's eyes could process that his weapon had been deactivated, hers was sailing through the air thirty meters away, swatted from her hand by Ben's use of Force, and he was upon her, wrapping her in the heavy brown cloak he had dropped during the fight.

Part of Obi-Wan was still used to space. Even after seventeen years of life on this scorched dessert world, part of his mind still ran to dead space and cold Coruscant. He knew that, in a cold environment such as a starship, if someone's ear was burned off, body heat would rush out of the wound. If the injured was also sweating profusely from half an hour of single combat, keeping them from getting cold was supremely important.

"Ben," she croaked again, once he had lifted her into his arms. "I'm sorry." There it was. That was the missing component to her rage. Leia was capable of remorse. Anakin had slaughtered younglings and butchered Tusken Raiders because he thought it was right. It may be that he found these things hard to do, but he felt no shame in doing them. Leia's intended rampage had no such conception of righteousness. She knew she had done wrong, and she was sorry. She was genuinely sorry. Ben considered his response to the child's heartfelt regret.

"We'll talk about that later," he decided to say. "Right now, let's see about that little robot."

Please comments.

 

 

Star Wars rant

Image via Wikipedia

I’m posting this first so you read it second. Read the post just after (above) this one before you read this one.

Now back to our regularly scheduled font. So first I sat down and wrote a whole ton about how I would change the characters. Somewhere in the middle of that, it occurred to me to swap Luke and Leia. Luke always was a whiney little girl, and in general no fun as a character. No inner conflict, no hard decisions. He was such a little girl, that in Return of the Jedi, when we’re presented with Mark Hamill playing a grown man, we say “bullshit.” Young Luke was such a little b*#$% that you can’t fathom that he could ever grow up. So when he does, it just feels contrived.

Also, Leia was always made out to be a powerful person but never really was one. She was fairly unimportant to the story. She’s just the damsel in distress who in two scenes, while the hero’s busy doing manly saving-the-day things, grabs the hero’s gun and takes a few shots. She’s the character that makes the movie longer because there’s got to be something for her to do. But you tend not to notice that because every other character acts like she’s important and useful. I say make them stop acting like that, but make her important and useful.

Best way to fix both of those problems: Send Luke to grow up as a senator’s son and send Leia to be a Tatooine farm girl. Now Luke isn’t a little girl so much as he is a pampered rich boy and Leia’s not useless because she’s got Luke’s part in the story. Also, she doesn’t have all that conditioning to dampen her angry streak early in her life. That makes the whole thing so much more interesting. Does that mean Leia rescues Luke from the Death Star? Maybe. Does it mean she flies an X-Wing and blows up the Death Star? Maybe. Does it mean that now Luke is completely useless? No, because Luke’s not a girl (at least not in any biological sense). At the very least, he gets killed, making him a meaningful plot element. Does it mean Han falls in love with Luke?

*pause*

No. No it doesn’t. I think one uncomfortable relationship is enough for any good story. At most, there will be the hefty bromance that was always hinted at (but never actually illustrated) in the original trilogy.

That being said, I’ve got half a mind to get rid of the Luke-Leia awkwardness. It just doesn’t make any sense. How does Obi-Wan take Luke (or in this case Leia) to the Death Star to rescue his sister and not tell him she’s his sister? Bad planning, that’s how. Craftless writers. When Luke rescued Leia from the Death Star, she wasn’t his sister. Not until Lucas let it slip to Carrie Fisher (if I have my story straight) during filming of ESB was Leia Luke’s sister. And how are both of his children in the same place at the same time ten feet away from him and Darth Vader still thinks they’re dead? Meeting one kid, maybe:

“Hey. You look an awful lot like some chick I knew about seventeen years ago. Isn’t that a coincidence? That must be why I feel like there’s a tremor in the Force. Because you remind me of her.” Fine. Fine. But when you feel the same tremor in the Force board your space station, and you know the princess is already on it, you’ve got to know something’s up. When you further discover that that kid that blew up your space station has the same last name as you (and nobody ever thought to change it), then you’ve got to sit down and say “wait a minute. He’s got my name and I feel this tremor in the Force. I feel the same thing when that girl WHO SURE LOOKS A LOT LIKE PADME AND WAS CONVENIENTLY BORN THE SAME DAY SHE DIED is around. There’s gotta be something going on there.” But no. Vader NEVER figures it out. He accidentally discovers that he has a daughter when he catches Luke thinking about her. BUT HE NEVER KNOWS WHO SHE IS!!! Come on. That’s a “villain” no well-organized rebel alliance needs to worry about.

Just full of holes. Bad, bad writing.

Also, how about Darth Vader? Evil, scary dude. But then we find out he’s not really “evil” per se. He’s more “misguided.” But if that’s the case, what’s all this nonsense about blowing up planets and enslaving entire races? Neither of those is really a grey area. Both pretty evil. My solution to that is simply this: know where the story’s going from the beginning. A New Hope was clearly meant to be a one-off. There was no “saga” until Empire Strikes Back, and there was no “Episode 1” until well after Return of the Jedi. If Darth Vader is a dude who thinks he’s doing the right thing but clearly isn’t, make him relatable. The bad guys who are easiest to hate are the ones who fall into a grey area. Gaius Baltar comes immediately to mind. Totally human, totally believable, and totally hated upon.

That being said, Darth Vader isn’t supposed to be Gaius Baltar. He’s supposed to be Darth Vader. But now (right now) when I watch A New Hope, I find myself thinking: where’s the Human Being I saw in Revenge of the Sith who would have some moral qualms about this? He would absolutely blow up a planet to enforce peace. But he would be conflicted about it. And he would totally give his children to the Emperor. But he might (might) hate himself for it. I mean, the way he is, Darth Vader (in the original trilogy) isn’t even a villain. He’s just a bad guy. Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith is a villain. He’s real. He’s believable. There’s something interesting about him. He’s not just the bad guy.

In New Star Wars, Han Solo also thinks he’s smooth less and is smooth more. If there’s one thing Han Solo wishes he was, it’s slick. Don’t get me wrong. He has his moments. Not many, but he does have them. “I know,” is one of them. “Scoundrel? I like the sound of that,” is not. In short, Han Solo needs to be more James Bond and less Jack Sparrow. Not a lot more James Bond. He just needs to be as cool as he thinks he is.

R2-D2 needs to be a lot less Tweeky and a tiny bit more Dalek. Far, far less “beedy-beedy” (R2 was a huge helping of “beedy-beedy”) and a little more “exterminate.” Not a lot of “exterminate.” Just not so comical. C-3PO is plenty of comedy for any robot duo.

And one more note. Just how powerful is this “Force” thing anyway? Can I read people’s minds or not? If I can, then Vader should know that Luke is his son as soon as he sees him on the Death Star. Not because Luke knows who his father is (which he does, by the way), but because Luke name is Skywalker. And if I can’t, then Vader can’t know that Luke has a sister, because he only finds that out when Luke is thinking about her (God knows why) when they’re dueling on Death Star 2.

And can I have telekinesis or can I not? If I can’t, then re-write the entire saga, because telekinesis is used very prominently in several scenes in every single film. If I can then why do I ever need to do any such thing as throw a rock (or was it a skull?) at a button across the room when I could just use my telekinesis to push the button? For that matter, what am I doing in this Rancor pit in the first place? Don’t I have superhuman reflexes? When the floor falls out from under me, I just grab the edge and throw myself back up into the room. JUST LIKE LUKE DOES TEN MINUTES LATER AT THE SARLACC PIT. So many inconsistencies.

It has been my opinion (until about an hour ago) that George Lucas used to be a good writer. Now I understand how wrong I was. There were people that wrote the story for the original Star Wars trilogy who were good writers. Lucas was able to take the story that they whispered in his ear and make it look good. Wherever he did any actual writing, we get crap. But that’s not entirely true, as I think he may have actually written the first one himself. But he certainly had Joseph Campbell whispering in his ear for ESB and RotJ.

Superman never looked this good

So Steam was having a sale last week. Just Cause and Batman: Arkham Asylum were 22 bucks for both. Everybody’s been saying how great Arkham Asylum is, and Just Cause looked like fun. So I bought them.

I had “played” the demo of B:AA a few months ago, but couldn’t make it work with my gamepad. I recognized this as a design flaw and decided (at the time) against buying the game. But now I remembered that .ini files are easy to hack and I should be able to make the controls do what I want.

Woe.

Remember in Conan the Barbarian, when the adult Conan first meets up with Thulsa Doom (played by the illustrious James Earl Jones) and gets into a discussion about “the riddle of steel?” The last thing Doom says to Conan is “contemplate this on the tree of woe.” I just kept hearing that line over and over in my head as I was hacking away at the config files for this game.

I have a gamepad that looks like this:

It’s just like a playstation 2 controller. In fact, that’s why I initially bought it: so I could run a PS2 emulator on my PC. Every once in a while, a game doesn’t like it. Invariably, it’s a game that was first released on the XBox 360 and works perfectly if you just buy an xbox for windows controller, which looks like it’s exactly the same thing (but pointedly is not):

So it is with Batman: Arkham Asylum. So, after much googling and searching of forums and sitting through the game’s splash screens to play it for two seconds at a time, I finally came upon the solution.

Wow.

Batman has never looked this good. I’m a little bit upset (as I always am) that the game utilizes proprietary NVidia technology, so I can’t really crank up the graphics because I have an ATI video card. But I can’t imagine how it could look any better. Here’s what I’m talking about (all screenshots taken by me):

Batman sits in the Batcave

The Dark Knight surveys the city

The Caped Crusader communicates with Oracle

Beautiful. And the game is good. It’s really damn good. The controls (once fixed) are tight, the voice-acting borders on awesome, the story is interesting, the sound effects are good and the combat is fun and simple without feeling repetitive (although it really is). Also, the game manages to be beautiful without eating up all my more than adequate system resources (it’s a family thing. My dad had a lot of system resources too). And of course it wouldn’t be Batman without gadgets. Batarangs, grappling hooks, forensic detection vision mode, spray-adhesive explosive, parachute-cape. What else does a Batman need?

I’ll tell you what else a Batman needs. He needs prey, and Arkham has plenty. The story centers on the Joker’s escape from captivity. While chasing the clown through the asylum, Batman encounters all of his favorite nemises (nemisises?). Bane, Killer Croc and Harley Quinn are the three that I’ve encountered in the first couple hours of the game.

Not only is the game fun and cool in itself, there are also references to Arkham’s origins in the HP Lovecraft mythology. To put it simply, the place is spooky. But then, so is the Batman.

I have only two complaints about the game, and they are minor. First and most aggravating is the fact that I have a gamepad with two analog joysticks. That being said, I need to push a button to make Batman run. If I push the stick a little bit, he walks lazily to the bathroom. If I push the stick to its extreme, he walks briskly down the street. I need to push the stick and push a button to make him run.

Second: when Batman is walking or standing around (so basically when there’s nothing going on), the view looks like the last two images up above. Batman is all the way to the left side of the screen. Cinematically, awesome. Control-ishly, nightmare. You can, however, swing the camera around to whatever angle you like, making this game vastly superior to many console ports to PC.

All in all, a pretty great game. Play it. Two thumbs up. Eight out of ten (only Blizzard gets ten out of ten). If you like Batman, or you like beating up the criminally insane, or you like creeping around sanitariums at night, this game is for you.

PS Zemanta just recommended images from my own Flikr stream. Win.

Movies you “need” to “see”

Cover of A Princess of Mars

You need to see Avatar. You do. It’s a beautiful film. It’s exciting and fun to watch. But that’s all. The more classic sci-fi I read, the less original Avatar is. Now I’m reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Oh. My. God. Some of the critters in Avatar were pulled right out of this book. As was a good chunk of the story.

You need (I guess) to see Surrogates. Again, a visually good movie with some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, none of them are new ideas and the story is pretty much ripped right from Asimov. At one point I leaned over to Kerry and said “this is Caves of Steel.” It wasn’t, but what was going on in the movie at the time made me believe it was going to be. Ving Rhames: awesome. Bruce Willis: not bad. James Cromwell: always a pleasure, but he was better in part one: I, Robot. And that had a fully-developed story.

The Bone Collector. Totally unrelated, but a similarly good movie. Interesting story, but zero believability. A couple who live in Manhattan fall asleep in a taxi. A New York cop (a woman, no less) goes to check out a possible crime scene alone. A (supposedly) wrongfully-accused felon convicted of tampering with material evidence at multiple crime scenes is a licensed medical technician. I could be totally wrong, but those three things seem completely unbelievable to me. If I was a uniformed police officer in any major city, there’s no way I’d ever go anywhere alone on purpose. Also, I really like Denzel, but he was entirely the wrong actor for this movie. His performance, more than anything, made me not like this movie as well as I would have if it had been done properly. He wasn’t bad. He just wasn’t the right man for the part. Angelina Jolie: loved her. I think she was right for the part and she played it well. Out of the three movies in this post, this one is the best, but it still doesn’t get the honor of being on my DVD rack.

The Man From Mars

Never have I wanted so badly to not finish a book. And Sandworms of Dune doesn’t count. That I don’t want to finish because it’s garbage. I don’t want to finish Stranger In a Strange Land (by Robert A. Heinlein) because I don’t want it to be over. It’s my new favorite book. I’ve been saying that a lot lately. First it was Neuromancer, and I don’t know what it will be next. But right now it’s Stranger.

Before I get started, a word of caution. If you are a Republican, or any other breed of evangelical Christian, don’t read this book. It will seem like an attack on your religion and you people respond with claws to anything you mis-represent as threatening. In short, your religion will not allow you to enjoy this book. That makes me sad (because I want everybody to enjoy this book), but it is nonetheless true. Prove me wrong. I will happily recant (that’s an invitation, not a challenge. No claws, please). If you happen to be that rare case of Human who has both religion and an open mind, read this book. You will like it.

I was reading on the toilet just now when what it is that I love about this book hit me. The theme is interesting, the philosophies discussed are intriguing. But that’s true of any good science fiction. What I love about Stranger In a Strange Land is that it’s charming. It’s full of little human moments (or, at least, there are enough of them for me to find it remarkable). Like Firefly (“you’re nice too, Captain.” “No I’m not. I’m a mean, old man.”). From Jubal’s “secretaries” throwing him into the pool, to Michael’s inevitable initial fascination with and mis-understanding of religion (and Jubal’s natural discomfort at discussing/explaining it), the characters are real, and act like it.

Heinlein (who somehow seems to avoid the common pitfall of modern literature: imbuing each of his characters with the same voice) introduces you to his characters the same way a good movie director does. He doesn’t present you with a dossier and say “This is Michael Bluth.” He throws you into their lives in media res and lets you figure out for yourself what kind of people they are. And you fall in love with them. When you discover something about them that doesn’t quite make sense with your picture of “who they are,” you don’t feel confounded. You feel rewarded, just like you do when you discover something about a real person that deepens your understanding of them.

For me, this was true even of the characters I didn’t like (Ben Caxton and Duke), and the ones you’re not supposed to like (Secretary General Douglas and his wife). I found myself sympathizing with them, because they are all whole persons, with real motivations and shortcomings.

This isn’t like Dune, and it isn’t like Ender’s Game. You’ll think it’s like Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451, but I promise it’s not. While it certainly has themes in common with all of those (mostly) great books, Stranger In a Strange Land is a unique work of classic science fiction. It plays with your mind, and if you can escape your preconceptions of righteousness, you will enjoy it.

Tron Legacy

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

Watch the video. Punch it up to 720p and full-screen it. You will thank me.

Now watch this one. Crank this sum-bitch all the way up to 1080p. Do it.

Chills. I really want to go to bed right now, but I can’t. If you’re not pissing your pants after watching those videos, turn in your wings: you are grounded. Towards the end (of the first one) I actually forgot I was watching a trailer and died a little bit when it ended. Whether you’ve seen Tron or not (and you better have), you need to be excited about this movie. This is going to make Avatar look like Clerks. I wanna know why I’m not playing the video game already. Will the movie tie-in with Tron 2.0? Cause that game had thirty-two flavors of ass-kicking (most of them were chocolate). This is something that someone undoubtedly already knows and I will now promise to find out. And I will find out. I just probably won’t re-blog about it.

*sigh* Do I really have to wait until December? Well… I suppose I don’t HAVE to… But I will. And Mom, under no circumstances are you allowed to see this one in a regular theater. I forgive you for Avatar, but seeing Tron Legacy in anything less than a 3D actual IMAX would be like watching Lawrence of Arabia in standard definition in 4:3.

Here’s another video from Comic Con 2009. You don’t have to watch this one. It’s concept footage. Fun stuff, but not as exciting as the trailers. It’s part one. I didn’t watch part two.

iPad. *sigh*

 

First this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4

and this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuA_OUL91og&NR=1

Then this:

http://mashable.com/2010/01/30/amazon-macmillan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Mashable+(Mashable)

Now this:

Two words: Battery life. The iPad has the battery life of a laptop, but is less useful than an iPhone. It can do everything the iPhone can do, but it can't make phone calls. So far as I have discovered, the only improvement in software is that the iPad will read ebooks.

This will not be "a long, drawn-out war." There will be no war of any kind. The Kindle is the best at what it does, and the iPad is just a big iPod Touch. The first time you take your iPad on an airplane and the battery dies, and you can't change it, you’ll remember how you could take your Kindle to the beach for a week and leave the charger at home. The war against the Kindle is over. The first time you load a webpage that is less than three years old on your iPad and you can't view flash content, the war against the netbook is over.

To be fair, the iPad will be successful, because Americans don’t care about functionality when something looks as cool as the iPhone. It’s a status symbol. Apple is cool. I own an iThing. I feel cool.

And Apple didn’t “change music” (referring to the above article). They didn’t create the MP3 player market. They didn’t catalyze an industry shift. When the iPod came on the scene, the digital music market was exactly where the e-book market is now. It was doing just fine until Apple decided people shouldn’t have quality portable music players. To quote PaulC, Apple doesn’t create markets. They destroy markets in their infancy. They did it to digital music players, and they did it to smart phones. Now they’re trying to do it to e-book readers. The difference with this market is that there is already a clearly-established champion opposing the iThing (and selling for about half the price).

I was excited about the iPad (just like my homeboy Adolf), but it's just the next in a decade-long line of disappointing Apple products. I really want to like Apple, because their devices are just so damn sexy. But they all fall far short of their competitors. I want an iPad. And I'll get one as soon as it's got a full web browser and a decent battery. iPod/Phone has outlived its coolness to me. The music player on my phone is more flexible. And I can use any headphones I want.

I’m just so disappointed with Apple. They could easily have the entire market, but they settle for half of it. If they took their cool devices and imbued them with the added quality of being good devices, Android, Kindle, netbooks and Blackberry would go out of business. Also, Windows would have legitimate competition again (I hate that I love Windows). The iPad is just like the iPhone. It scores “mediocre” in everything it does (other than visually). I love that Apple is trying to put out an all-in-one device. But why must they water it down? I want so badly for iThings to be good as well as cool. I want to be cool enough to own an iThing. But until iThings are good enough to warrant my eye drifting beyond the death star-ish Apple logo, I guess I’m just not.

Bottom line: If the iPad was everything it could (easily) be, it would dominate two markets (e-book & netbook). If it was as good as it’s competitors in either of those markets, it would take ninety percent of that market instead of fifty (numbers manufactured based on my impressions of what people own), based on my observation that most people would rather have something that looks nicer but has the same functionality.

Everybody loves their iPod. Imagine how much they’d love them if they were as awesome as people think they are.