Monthly Archives: May 2019

And Now My Birthday Has Ended

Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. I started the day by driving to court and reporting for jury duty. I have often been summoned to jury duty but I have never served. As a writer I think it would be good and as a citizen I think it is my duty to do such service but alas it seems for the most part lawyers do not like the look of me. Yesterday it was not the lawyers but rather the lack of courtrooms. There was but one available for trail and so after they called a single jury pool away the rest of us were dismissed. Because so much of the day remained the rule for my day-job compelled me to report to work. So my birthday was split between a jury lounge and my cubical, surprisingly this was not the dullest birthday I have experienced.

In 1981 I was enlisted in the United States Navy and served my one and only Western Pacific Deployment, or WestPac. On my birthday we were no floating about the middle of the ocean, no for that special day we had found a spot even more boring than endless sea, Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its strategic location makes it perfect as a base for long rang aircraft and there is a tiny tiny US Naval station there. Personnel who volunteer for duty at Diego Garcia, at least when I was in the service, have that duty count as sea duty, and one year is credited as two. You see, unlike other Naval Stations around the world, there is nothing at Diego Garcia. No native population, no city or town, just the military men and women on a sliver of land with a lagoon that often hosts sharks. Going ashore there, and even with nothing you still go ashore when you can, I watched a shark come out of the water to get a flying fish. The big entertainment on my birthday there was sitting on a beach watching my friend Dean Amick, and it was his birthday as well, struggle trying to work out how to split a coconut open. Ahh, good times.

So you see yesterday, in comparison, wasn’t bad at all. Not to mention I now have a nifty blu-ray stuffed with bonus material for the British horror film, Night of the Demon, one of the many films referenced in the opening song to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

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A Really Good Book: Delta V by Daniel Suarez

As I have stated before this blog is not a book review site. When I read a novel that doesn’t work for me, is flawed, or just fails to achieve takeoff speed I am not going to mention it here. However if I get my hands on a book that really works, which really sings you’ll hear about it and Delta-V by Daniel Suarez is just such a novel.

Set in the very close year of 2033 Delta-Vis the story of humanity’s first attempt to mine precious resources from a near Earth asteroid. Most people think of asteroid mining as something that would take place between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where the main asteroid belt resides but a number asteroids also orbit much closer, even occasionally cross the Earth’s orbit with potentially catastrophic consequences. The protagonist of the story is James Tighe, a cave diving adventurer who, after surviving a terrifying disaster while on a deep under ground cave dive, is recruited by mysterious billionaire Nathan Joyce as a potential member of the first asteroid mining crew. Joyce, an entirely fictional character, is part of the New Space contingent of billionaire including ones who made fortunes in robotics/Artificial Intelligences, reusable rockets, and Internet based commerce. (You can decide for yourself who these characters are possibly analogs of in our real world.) As the training and mission unfold it becomes clear that Joyce hasn’t told anyone the full scope and audacity of his plan and his lies, short cuts, and mania turn out to endanger the lives of everyone involved.

Delta-V  is a novel heavy on the technical aspects and for some that will prove to be too dry of a narrative to endure but for devotes of ‘hard sf’ this novel will be catnip. Suarez has worked out the launch windows, the delta-v for his transfers and journeys, and the climax of the novel is an amazing meld of engineering and trying emotional decisions for the characters. Though hardly a massive tome, the story if packed with a number of fascinating and believable characters and could easily be adapted into a limited run series if someone wanted to pony up the funds for a production that would be as challenging as this one promises.

Over all I really loved this book and I can’t recommend it enough.

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Avengers: Endgame – The Second Viewing

Because I had a routine eye exam slated for Tuesday it made sense to take a day off from the day-job and that allowed me to go se a later night showing of Avengers: Endgame.

The movie works just as well on a second viewing as it did on my first. Though I did have a free large soda and popcorn, due to this being my birthday month and that’s an additional perk from the AMC A-List subscription, I still did not leave the sheening for a restroom break.

The timing of the screenings Monday night meant I attended a 3-D showing of the movie. While the 3-d effect was for the most part well done it was not effective. The Russo brothers shot the film for 2D and nothing in the framing or shot set-ups made the 3D effect any more important to the narrative. As it was shot on 2D that also means that the 3D version is a retro scan created by digital means and while it did not suffer from the sort of glaring errors other movies had presented, yes I am looking at you Clash of the Titans where an actors hair was in a different focal plane than the actor, not all of the 3D shot in Endgamewere flawless. In a number of shots actors in deeper focal planes looked as though they had been composted into the scene. There is absolutely no need to see this film in 3D.

Overall though I had a great time, even if I did get back home around one a.m.

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Sunday Shudder: The Car

For my Sunday night movie I decided to take a chance on one of those bizarro horror movies from the 1970s, The Car.Now if you did not know the 1970s were a very odd time for Hollywood and the global film industry. Between the collapse of the classic studios system but before the rise of the mega-corporation analytic and franchise driven system of today there existed a brief window where personal auteur driven films were produced such classics as American Graffiti, The God Father,and Taxi Driver  all hail from this unique era of motion picture production. After the success of Rosemary’s Babyand The Exorcist  the public also seemed tohave developed a taste for demon and evil oriented horror. So in 1977, the same year as Star Warsand two years following Jaws, the film that created the summer blockbuster, Americans were treated to the unique cinematic experience that is The Car.

Set in a remote small town/county in Utah The Caris the story of Wade, a sheriff’s deputy, divorced dad, and general all around good guy dealing with the mysterious murderous motorcar rampaging along the deserted desert roadways. The car, a black two door without any branding, no doubt no automobile manufacturer wished to be associated with such implied carnage, spends the moving mowing down random cyclists, hitchhikers, and lawmen. The film has a number of subplots, Luke the deputy with a drinking problem, Amos the despised abusive husband and general contractor, the old flame relationship between the county sheriff and Amos’ suffering spouse, but none of these are brought to any sort of resolution and as ‘color’ they fail to bring the story any sense of verisimilitude. The car itself looks fantastic, its lack of trademarks or hood emblems, along with the missing door handled gives it a sinister outline that suggests something not crafted by nor intended for human hands. The sequences of roadway violence of tame, even by the standard of late 70s film production and so the film is almost entirely bloodless, perhaps a major detraction to todays audiences. The cast gamely tried to play the scenes and the outlandish plot straight but hampered by a script that is neither bad enough to be enjoyable as a guilty pleasure not skilled enough to generate characters of depth the movie languishes in the mediocre middle ground that will reduced in audience’s memories to a few scenes and set-piece gags.

Most horror films fall into one of two broad categories, an evil with agency and therefore motivation, goals that the evil needs to achieve and ones where the evil represents a random, chaotic, and ultimately nihilistic universe. The Car  could not settle on either and thematically ended up as a muddled mess. The demonic car possessed enough agency to hold grudges and make plans, and yet there was no goal, no explanation for why this evil emerged on this rural community.

Over all the film was perfectly fine for a late Sunday night movie but not worthy of repeat viewings.

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Three Weeks

For three weeks now I have been following the weight watchers diet. The change was prompted because I had reached a new record weight and that was not a good thing. With the years passing under me plus the pressure on my joints already suffering from arthritis returning to a more modest weight seemed imperative and yet previous diets had proved to be too difficult to maintain. A writer friend of mine after facing a life threatening health crisis had used Weight Watcher to great effect and it seemed reasonable to give it a go.

It is by far the easiest weight management diet I have attempted. All of my empty calorie junk food snacks have been replaced with fruit and my regular meals are for the most part untouched. (Can you tell my problem was really junk food?) I can still have a burrito once a week and a nice lunch out with my sweetie-wife on our Sundays out.

At the two-week mark I had lost, at least according to our home scale, 13 pounds and I am not suffering from hunger and dreadful late night temptations.

I am not selling this. You do what is right for you, for me but this looks like it may actually work.

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Stupidity at WinterFell

Do Not Read if you haven’t seen episode 3, The Long Night, from season 8 of Game of Thrones.

The big battle for Winterfell between the living and the dead is over and all I can say is that on both side the commanders had no clue how to deploy and utilize their forces and the results are purely the invention of writers with no appreciation for military science. The episode had lots and lots of lovely actions, character scenes, and moments meant to inspire but the grad shape of things were horrid and damaging to any conception of our heroes as capable leaders.

The Dothraki are light cavalry and not the sort o force you send headlong into an enemy formation. (That would be heavy cavalry, you know knight in shinning armor and so on.) Their slaughter was wasteful and could only be ordered by a leader who cared nothing for the lives under their command. Positioning a massive infantry force *outside* of the castles walls to meet a much larger force is foolish, almost but not quite, as stupid as sending your light cavalry in a frontal assault. The whole point of the fortification is that you stay behind the high walls and rain death down on those poor bastards who have to climb them to get to you, particularly if you are outnumbered. If you have something in your possession that the enemy needs to claim victory, a crown, a location, a young man who speaks in mysterious phrases, you do not place your most powerful forces distant from the enemy’s objective. At night. With no method of communication between the prize and those forces.

So how should have the defenders of WinterFell have set out their battle plans?

One: The trenches of fire was a great idea, more of those so you can create ‘kill boxes’ to trap enemy forces that can be burned down by dragons or catapult fire. Concentric rings surrounding Winterfell that would break up the enemy forces. All infantry should be inside the castle defending it from the walls keeping the dead out. It helps that the dead do no have siege engines and towers. The Dothraki out on the wings of the battlefield, armed with dragon-glass arrows. Not to attack the main body of the enemy forces, but to exploit with their fast movement any opportunity to take enemy sub-commanders, the white walkers, and neutralize much larger factions of the dead that way. The two dragons stay close to Winterfell and victory conditions, Bran. They supply close air support burning the army of the dead as the fire trenches trap them. They stay together so that if countered by the enemy dragon they have a 2 to 1 advantage.

So how would all this go wrong for the heroes creating a mood that they are going to lose?

First off the fire trenches have a more limited utility, as the dead are willing to create those corpse bridges allowing more of the enemy to reach the walls. Next, the Night King uses his air power to strafe the battlements, forcing the two dragons riders near Bran to abandon their positions, opening Bran for assault by white walkers. Once the Night King has drawn off the dragon riders and sent the best warrior scrambling for the Gods Wood to defend Bran he circles back and uses his air power to lift and drop troops behind the wall. They’re dead can be deployed in a manner no living person can use. Just drop from as you swoop over the interior court. The white walkers ‘retreat’ from Bran, drawing out fighters armed with the magic steel that can kill them leaving bran with only a token defending force. Air combat can give you the same results of separating the dragon riders as the episode did. Now the night king uses his dragon to breach the walls, as he did The Wall, sending massive forces into Winterfell. Jon is forced to defend the interior court, seeking the night king, but get bottled up by forces there, leaving the night king free to move against Bran leaving our favorite girl to win the day.

See, it didn’t have to be stupid.

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