Buffy Bloopers

I didn’t realize these bloopers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer were online. Charisma Carpenter has a genuine-sounding laugh.

Stop hitting Giles!

Magic: The Gathering—at the Mall

I sometimes hang out in malls to write. If I stay at home, I end up thinking about what I should do to clean things up.

This past weekend, I went to a mall in the Eastside suburbs of Seattle and saw that part of it was dominated by gamers.

Yes, those tables go all the way down

When I asked a guy there what it was, he said it was card-trading for Magic the Gathering.

What’s really interesting is that if you look at this picture close enough, you’ll see a girl sitting there among the guys.

Click to enlarge

Best Covers of 2014

Completely subjective, of course. My choice for best science fiction cover is Upgraded, art by Julie Dillon.

This cover is endlessly fascinating. I especially like how the arm is drawn in break-apart schematic style, only the arm really is breaking apart under the influence of the metal rings. (Or maybe it’s coming together?) The cyborg herself looks very relaxed during this.

Upgraded is an anthology of cyborg short stories. I haven’t read it myself. The stories seemed too avant-garde or new wave or something.

For best fantasy cover, my choice is Night Owls, art by Dan Sipley.

This cover captured the contrast between the two female leads. There’s a great deal of subtlety here, and you can see how claw-like the crouching woman’s nails are.

Night Owls is an interesting New Adult novel about occult forces invading a college campus. Facing off against them is a mismatched group of people who really don’t trust each other, but who will have to work together. Believe it or not, though I liked the plot and characters, I didn’t finish it because I didn’t like the casual swearing in one viewpoint character’s narrative.

Best runner up is Peacemaker, art by Joey Hi-Fi.

You have to give this artist points for being different. This definitely attracted my eye to it on the bookshelf.

Set in the future, the character on the cover is a tough ranger in the world’s largest nature reserve, set on a coast near a megacity in Australia. I did read Peacemaker and enjoyed it. Then I was shocked to see it described as fantasy. I thought of it as science fiction, and the cover reinforces that.

But she does have an animal companion who is invisible to others. So does the hunky U.S. Ranger who barges into her life, whom she resents at first. And she’s attacked by things that don’t show up on recordings. Oh. It’s an urban fantasy, set in the future. So this is the best cross-genre cover. 

Space Needle Drone Flight

If you’re having a bad day, watch this: A skilled drone pilot launched a drone that buzzed the space needle.

I don’t know if this is the same flight where the police tracked down the hotel room the drone emerged from and had a good talking to with the owner, as mentioned in my previous blog post. There are the usual concerns: I remember the scene in the movie 1984 where a helicopter operated by the Thought Police looked in the window of Winston Smith’s apartment. And this makes it easy for a terrorist, whether domestic or foreign, to drop poison in a city’s water supply.

But see the beauty of this shot. Also, consider how this can revolutionize search and rescue. The common use of some drones will also make a dividing line between stories.

I watched a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which a couple of her friends were kidnapped. When she saw they were missing from the library, she thought they might be out looking for someone. I thought, “Why doesn’t she call them?” Then I realized the Buffy series was before cell phones were in common use.

This is an enormous divide in movies and TV shows: pre-cell phone and cell phone. (I know that smart phones also make a divide, but not as drastic.) The same is true for novels. And in the near future, novels will be viewed as pre-drone or drone. If some child is lost in a city or a wilderness, readers will puzzle over why no drone was sent out. To spy on someone who is sunbathing or unloading supplies from a ship, readers will wonder why a satellite had to be co-opted rather than just use a joystick and drone.

And for novels set in the future, 3-D printers will manufacture military drones for the battlefield or exploration drones to send out from spaceships that have landed on planets. Drones are the wave of the future, or perhaps I should say waves of drones are the future. 

I Saw the Doctor Who Christmas Special

Yes, I saw it, but I won’t reveal what was in it. Instead, I’ll post an eerie dream I had back in 2009. Does it resemble the Doctor Who Special? You’ll have to watch it to find out.

I strongly encourage writers to write down their dreams. That way, you’ll have nifty accounts like this.

            I was sitting in a Bible study, possibly in a pew or in a row of chairs. I was at the end of my row, and to my left a friend of mine was at the end of his row, and his wife was beyond him. The friend and I were both reading texts while someone was up front, pointing at things on an overhead projection screen.

            It might have been at this point that my alarm went off, waking me. I reached up and shut it off. I looked out my window from my bed. The blinds were partway up, and I could see it was snowing out, which the news last night had predicted was a possibility. The snowflakes were a good size, and they were being blown from right to left by the wind, so it was snowing horizontally.

            I woke up from that dream and saw the snowflakes were actually very fine. They were coming down vertically, but the slightest draft would blow them from left to right for a moment.

            I woke up from that dream and saw that the window was now right next to my bed, without any blinds. I could see in the dim light someone was climbing up the building. Part of him was showing through the right edge of the pane, which was near my head. He was making knocking or hammering sounds as he climbed, and I could also see the head of a dog through the left part of the window -- which shouldn’t have been possible, since I live on the second floor. The dog was staring at me or the climber, but it wasn’t barking.

            Grabbing the edge of the sliding window that was near my head, I opened it. I grasped the edge of some of the climber’s clothing and yelled, “Hey! What are you up to?” He didn’t pay any attention to me, though my grabbing him stopped his climbing any further. He was dressed like an elf. Not an elf out of Tolkien, but one of Santa’s elves -- colorful, simple clothing, and with a cap. His nose was prominent and red. He simply looked off into the distance to my left.

            I realized my room was very dark. What I thought had been the edge of the sliding window was actually the edge of a room divider I had been grabbing in my sleep.

            I woke up from that dream and saw my window was the usual distance away, and the drapes and blinds were closed. Some dim light was coming in, which is usual for this time in the morning. I haven’t looked outside to see if it is snowing yet.

The Movie The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

This won’t be a full review. I’ll content myself in noting some major differences with the book, and a couple of standout scenes.

Among the main characters are Galadriel, Legolas, and Tauriel. None of these characters appear in the book The Hobbit. Tauriel is not even in The Lord of the Rings; she was made up for these movies.

This was a leftover concept from the movie version of The Lord of the Rings. An early concept was to take Arwen—the elf-maiden Aragorn was in love with—and make her a warrior and part of the fellowship of the ring. The fan backlash made them abandon that. So they snuck in Tauriel for The Hobbit.

As for standout scenes, considering the title of the movie, you shouldn’t be surprised if there’s . . . a battle? When Thorin Oakenshield and company charge into battle, it was an incredible moment in cinema. And it was great fun when Bard the bowman has only one arrow left to go up against the dragon Smaug the Golden.

I’ll let people say for themselves whether they like the movie. Just brace yourself if you see the movie first and then read the book, because the differences are huge.

And Jana, if you’re reading this, Beorn got ripped off again. Are they prejudiced against bears?

Nothing against Evangeline Lilly, who looked great as Tauriel

photo by Luigi Novi

Book Review: Memory Zero

“There was a touch of reluctance in her voice, and he had to wonder whether it was simply a matter of knowing what was on the disks and not wanting him to see it or that she didn’t want to pry into Kazdan’s affairs more than necessary. But that didn’t make any sense—not if she wanted answers.”

(For teaser sentences on other books, see MizB’s Should be Reading.)

Memory Zero by Keri Arthur starts in an unusual way. Sam, a rather normal detective in a world that acknowledges the existence of vampires and other non-human creatures, has to kill her partner Kazdan when he attacks her. While trying to clear her name, she finds unknown assailants trying to assassinate her. What’s interesting is though Sam is supposed to be a normal human, she develops abilities no human should have. This first becomes indisputable when she flees an assassination attempt by jumping out of a two-story building and landing on her back on pavement with no ill effects.

Gabriel is an experienced member of the Spook Squad who ends up protecting Sam and investigating her at the same time. She resents him, thinking he sees her as a lab rat, but he goes out of his way to save her out of more than one deadly situation. Gabriel has his own unique abilities, which he shows when he casually takes to flight.

Memory Zero goes along at a good clip, with surprising twists and turns. It takes a while to get used to this combination of fantasy and science fiction, with vampires and powerful handheld lasers existing in the same universe. Sam and Gabriel end up unraveling conspiracies with implications far beyond a special police squad, leading to the tumultuous climactic scenes that seem more science fictional than fantasy.

A weak point is that Sam escapes more than once from some prison or locked room, just because no one bothered to keep a camera pointed at her. The futuristic nature of the story just makes this glaring.

For me, a relief is that there were no sex scenes and no romance in Memory Zero. I like urban fantasy without the girl falling for the bad boy, or wondering if two characters are going to get into a clench right at the halfway point. 

Non-Christmas Christmas Songs

The subject came up recently of non-Christmas Christmas songs—that is, songs we sing this time of year that have nothing to do with Christmas. I think Jingle Bells was mentioned, although it turns out this was originally a Thanksgiving song.

My favorite is Good King Wenceslas. Many are surprised at this since it is found in hymals, so it is thought to be a Christmas hymn. It is actually a Saint Stephen’s Day hymn. After all, the first two lines are “Good King Wenceslas look’d out / On the feast of Stephen.”

public domain

Saint Stephen’s Day is December 26, so this hymn is mixed in with the Christmas hymns.

Another fellow, Saint Nicholas, has his day on December 6. His reputation as a giver of gifts also was mixed in with Christmas, but that is another story.

Carving Initials on the Colosseum

A Russian tourist was caught this past weekend carving his initials on the Colosseum. There, where gladiators battled for their lives, epic sea battles were reenacted, and people were executed before audiences of over 50,000, some dimwit decided to deface it with graffiti.

photo by Paul Zangaro

He was fined 20,000 euros. And if he can’t pay it, he should be thrown to the lions.