Book Review: Virtues of War

Suppose your troops have managed to retreat to a tree line in the dark of night. The automated troops who chased you have found the range of the tree line with their rockets. But they stay outside the range of your grenade launchers, and your troops’ bullets do not harm them.

What do you do?

If you’re Lieutenant Katja Emmes, you charge forward out of the tree line, ordering your troops to do the same.

When she gets twenty meters forward, she targets one of the automated soldiers, and her troops destroy it with grenades. Ditto for the next and the next, while the enemy rockets harmlessly hit the tree line behind them. They send the enemy reeling back, but have to retreat themselves when artillery fire comes down around them.

  

  

Virtues of War is one of the best military science fiction novels I’ve read in a long time. Set far enough in the future for there to be major colonized worlds that can challenge Earth, yet close enough to our time that all the human interactions are familiar, Bennett R. Coles was written what may be an instant classic.

Assigned to the fast attack craft Rapier, Lieutenant Emmes punches her way through brutal fighting, whether on a planet or on board an enemy ship. Although brave to the point of taking on suicidal risks, she is not immune to the emotional baggage of war and the internecine backstabbing that comes with it.

Coles describes with gritty detail the physical shocks that Emmes and a few other main characters endure when going to and from combat, much less from the battles themselves. This is no rah-rah book; he throws in our faces some of the morally ambiguous acts performed during war. And the machinations of an intelligence officer puke can really mess things up.

Overall, Virtues of War features fully-realized characters hurtling into one gritty situation after another. Bennett R. Coles was an officer for fourteen years in the Canadian Navy, and it shows. 

Movie Analysis: The Host

The Host was the 2013 movie based on a Stephanie Meyer novel about Melanie, a tenacious young woman whose body has been taken over by an alien named Wanderer, but who will not give up on reuniting with loved ones who are resisting this conquest of our world. 

Just as my analysis of Inception showed its characters were based on familiar ones, so this will show that The Host is essentially:

Teenage kissing meets The Wizard of Oz

Since this is an analysis and not a review, it is composed entirely of SPOILERS.

The Host’s main characters correspond to the ones in The Wizard of Oz (for both, I’m referring to the movie versions), though the stories are very different—Melanie wants to find the remaining members of the human race, especially those she loves, while Dorothy is trying to go home. However, the plots have striking similarities.

The Host begins with Melanie fleeing the alien Seeker. We find out through flashbacks that she was doing this to protect her little brother, Jamie. Melanie has a huge, terrifying fall. This establishes Melanie as a Dorothy figure, with the Seeker as the evil teacher/wicked witch, and Jamie as Toto. It is true that Dorothy is plucked up by a tornado, but then she falls down quite a ways.

A Healer (played by a black actor) coaxes Wanderer into Melanie’s body. Just remember this when we get farther along.

Along the way, Wanderer/Melanie picks up companions. They are in reverse order from The Wizard of Oz, but they correspond just fine. In flashbacks we see Jared, an emotionally impulsive young man. Melanie hits him the face when they meet. This establishes Jared as a Cowardly Lion figure, but a lion who has already found his courage. He will continue to be emotionally impulsive throughout the story.

Next, Wanderer/Melanie meets Jeb, who almost constantly has his rifle on him and uses it to protect Wanderer/Melanie. He is a Tin Man figure who has already found his heart, and he is compassionate towards her from start to finish.

And Wanderer/Melanie meets Ian, a more thoughtful young man. He is obviously a scarecrow figure who has already found his brain. He is able to think things through about the nature of Wanderer.

An interesting plot point is just after Wanderer/Melanie encounters the seemingly impossible wheat field, the Seeker almost spots them from a helicopter. This is kind of like how Dorothy encounters the talking apple trees, and the wicked witch then attacks with fire.

From here on the plots diverge widely, since they really are two different stories. But they converge interestingly enough when Wanderer/Melanie goes to the city and gains a great talisman—a silver pod that the aliens can live in. This corresponds to Dorothy gaining the wicked witch’s broom. And Wanderer/Melanie gets rid of the Seeker in a surprising way—by coaxing the Seeker into the pod, just as Dorothy gets rid of the wicked witch by the surprising use of water.

But Wanderer cannot or will not leave in the same way, just as Dorothy misses out on a balloon ride. The good witch tells Dorothy the secret to going home is in the ruby slippers she gave Dorothy at the start. Even so, Doc (who is played by a black actor—remember the Healer described above) secretly gives Wanderer and Melanie a happy ending by coaxing Wanderer into a different young woman’s body.

Is this analysis overly-speculative? I say no. What clued me in was the scene towards the end of The Host, when Wanderer contemplates dying. She tells Ian, “I’ll miss you the most.” I thought, “What? That guy is a scarecrow figure?” This was the movie giving a wink and a nod to the audience. From there it was a matter of backtracking to see who corresponded to what.

Even if you think I’m stretching things a bit, this is an interesting way to have the bare bones of a story to start, and then filling in from there. What’s needed is an astounding scene in the middle of the story. In The Wizard of Oz, it was the revealing of the great and powerful wizard, with plenty of smoke and fire, and the lion doing a pratfall after that. In The Host, it was Ian and Jared taking turns kissing Wanderer/Melanie, to figure out if Melanie was in there. Reportedly, this was when teenage girls in movie theaters went wild. And Melanie shows she’s there by biting Jared on the lip. So find a corresponding scene that will be a big hit with your audience.

Public domain

Issaquah Salmon Days 2015

Issaquah is a suburb to the east of Seattle, where they celebrate the return of the salmon to spawn in the first weekend of October. Obviously, the salmon are constantly returning this time of year and don’t care about our calendars, but that’s the festive time to go.

Just as I saw in 2011, they’ve made their Issaquah Salmon Days into quite the street fair.

People can get so preoccupied with the craft and food booths, they can forget the hatchery. Salmon swim back from the Pacific Ocean up Issaquah Creek.

The picture above is not exactly of a fish ladder. (I think my shadow at the bottom is third from the left.) This part was purposefully designed to be too steep for the salmon to leap over. After they get tired of trying that route, they discover a side entrance to the hatchery. Much of it has glass windows for public viewing. 

It’s hard to see because of the reflections, but the middle of the picture above shows a large salmon, building up its strength to leap to the next level to the right.

If you live in the area, this is a good outdoor activity. If you have kids, let them see how real the salmon are.

SCA Win!

In Indiana, Karen Dolley woke up to find a male intruder. She punched him several times, then kept him cornered with a Japanese sword until the police came.

photo by Jean

Okay, it didn’t look exactly like this

Read about it here.

This is great, and not just because a forty-three year-old woman crushed the thirty year-old intruder. She’s a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. So if you spend time with this or similar accoutrements, you can point out this article to skeptical relatives to show how practical you are. 

The Martian—Not a True Story

Some people think the recent movie The Martian is a true story. See the Buzzfeed page.

Matt Damon did not go to Mars

This is like my post on how some people believe there is sound in space because of Star Wars.

Also, look at the poster above. It’s hard to tell that the title of the movie is The Martian. Obviously the marketing people thought that sounded kind of hokey, so they make the subtitle “Bring Him Home” look like the actual title.

This is like how the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow was rebranded as “Live. Die. Repeat.” I think I saw it in a rental store under that second title, not the first one. 

NOAA on Mermaids

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a statement on mermaids. This is your tax dollars at work. Let’s see how they did.

A Mermaid by Waterhouse

public domain

They state that “The ancient Greek epic poet Homer wrote of them in The Odyssey.” No, Odysseus encountered sirens, not mermaids. They were part bird.

Sirens by Hans Thoma  

Then they state, “The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species. Magical female figures first appear in cave paintings in the late Paleolithic (Stone Age) period.” But those were similar to this rotund, faceless carved image.

 This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust,

a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom.

They give their final statement: “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” So there. I can’t show their picture of a mermaid, since I’m not sure of its copyright status, but you can see it at their website. It doesn’t compare well with any of the above.

Movie Review—Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

Thomas and his friends, having escaped from the maze, can now relax and get some rest in a quasi-military atmosphere, sleeping in real bunks instead of on the ground or makeshift beds. They don’t have a care in the world—or do they? And where did Teresa go?

Soon they have to go running into the Scorch—the desolated badlands left after whatever apocalyptic disaster devastated civilization. Besides ruined, deserted buildings, there’s not much out there. How will they survive?

The Scorch Trials is a very different movie from the first one, The Maze Runner. (See my review here.) The Maze Runner spent a good amount of time developing the characters—except for Teresa, who was just the “girl”—and then having a good amount of action. The Scorch Trials takes off a few minutes from where The Maze Runner left off and assumes the viewers already know the characters.

So some critics say this is a lousy movie because of the lack of character development. Although we see Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) is the dominant leader, Minho (Ki Hong Lee) is still the strongest and bravest, and Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) is the most able to question Thomas and provide skepticism, we do not really see the personalities of the rest. (Teresa especially is a cipher, but that is on purpose.)

This reminds me of the time that Siskel & Ebert reviewed Rambo III. Ebert said he liked the action but wasn’t sure what to say about the movie overall. With an amused look, Siskel said, “It delivers.” The same is true of The Scorch Trials. Normally I don’t like a movie that is so focused on the action that it doesn’t take a couple minutes to develop the minor characters, but this was a great movie. This was not mindless action where we don’t care about the characters; I cared about whether each character survived, and the action-packed story was interesting.

To kind of state the obvious, I don’t think they could all sprint so fast after being forced to give massive blood samples, or after running out of water while traipsing through a desert. And for the evil organization to be pronounced “Wicked” is kind of childish. But I have to hand it to The Scorch Trials. It delivers. 

Worldcon 2015, Part II—John Hemry, Kendare Blake, Female Vulcan

As I said in my last post, Today I get to the fun stuff at Worldcon. But first, a couple of weird things.

In the hotel I stayed at, look at what the French call body wash. I get that things get lost in translation, but didn’t any of the English-speaking staff notice?

Is this a joke?

And then there was the one-armed chromium torture device. It dispersed water anywhere from cold to lukewarm.

And it was hard to wash off the gel douche

with lukewarm water

But the convention had numerous workshops, readings by authors, and autograph sessions. In one of the latter I spoke to my favorite author, John Hemry, who sometimes goes by the pen name Jack Campbell.

I had a question about the character of Morgan in his Lost Stars series. She’s the sort of person who can do anything and assassinate anyone. I asked, “Is she based on any one person?” He said with a chuckle, “Not anyone I know.”

A rising star in the fantasy field is Kendare Blake. After she read from one of her stories, I asked for a photo.

She’s known for her Goddess War series. What I like about what I’ve read so far is that she understands how goddesses like Athena were portrayed in Greek mythology, then expands on them from there. Other writers stick in names of characters from mythology into their stories without much of a feel for what the old stories were like.

The Hugo Awards were disappointing. A number of people voted for “no award” in categories like Best Short Story. I don’t know why I would go to the Hugos again.

I didn’t have time to take many costume photos. But here’s one of a female Vulcan.

So that was it. Only one day at Worldcon. 

Worldcon 2015, Part I—Smoke, River, Worlds Fair

Worldcon, the largest science fiction/fantasy convention that emphasizes writing, was held in Spokane this year while the wildfires of eastern Washington were mostly out of control. The moment I stepped out of the shuttle to the hotel on Friday night, I smelled smoke. Earlier in the day, people had seen the smoke in the air and gagged on it, using breather masks and handkerchiefs to cover their mouths.

The next day, the convention center had these taped on the insides of the doors.

Things weren’t so bad on Saturday, but I detected a taint of smoke while I did the Riverwalk along the Spokane River. Other than that, it was peaceful and beautiful.

Wooden bridges led to a park on a peninsula in the middle of river.

This was the site of the 1974 World’s Fair. Here’s the skeleton that’s left of the pavilion (it was originally covered with temporary white vinyl).

Of course, I had to find a more unusual angle.

This is a little too peaceful, so my next post will be on the convention itself. 

[Permission granted to use any photo on this post, so long as it is labeled “Photo by Mark Murata”]