Hope

Hope is a new multi-part fanzine raising money for bushfire relief in the Australian state of Victoria.

It is edited by the awesome Grant Watson, with contributions donated by writers, artists and fans in Australia and from overseas. It is supported by the Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation (WASFF), and has received assistance from the Film & Television Institute of WA, Supanova and Big Finish Productions.

Issue #1 is now available in a PDF edition in return for donations. How much you donate is up to you - Grant recommends a minimum of AUS$5.00. If you wish to subscribe to the entire five issue series, make it AUS$20.00 or more.

Hope #1 contains contributions from Mo Ali, Sophie Ambrose, R.J. Astruc, Lyn Battersby, K.K. Bishop, Matthew Chrulew, Stephen Dedman, Mark S. Deniz, d.n.l, Paul Haines, Simon Haynes, Kathleen Jennings, Ju Landeesse, Damian Magee, David A. McIntee, Simon Petrie, Andrew Phillips, Gillian Polack, Robert Shearman and Daniel Smith. The cover is by Rebecca Handcock.

I can personally testify that almost everyone on that list is like a loaded shotgun ready to fire entertainment in your direction; I say "almost" only for lack of exposure to some of the authors rather than any dissatisfaction with their shotgun-like qualities. Personally I'd buy the thing just to get Rob Shearman's contribution; he's the guy who did the Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who story "Dalek" as well as most of the best Who audio plays and the amazing short fiction collection "Little Deaths".

Also, I'm led to understand that an upcoming issue may feature content by me. You should therefore buy the whole series in order to find out.

For information on how to donate and obtain your copies of this excellent project, head on over to Grant's LJ and get out your credit cards or PayPal accounts. I mentioned it's all for charity, right?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead. Starring Jake Hoffman, Devon Aoki, and "Karate Kid" Ralph Macchio. Because Hamlet is a play in which everyone dies. Or comes back as a vampire.

How did no one tell me this was coming? HOW?

Closing The Book

It's a child's response, isn't it?

Sensing that the story is not going to have a happy ending, you close the book. The resolution remains unread, the story remains unfinished, and the tragic conclusion is indefinitely postponed.

The mature reader does not close the book. The mature reader turns the last page, experiences the ending for better or for worse, and then draws a conclusion as to whether it was a well-told story.

I'm really talking here, of course, about the new Prince of Persia, which has... an ending. Just the one. There is no alternate ending; if you play the game to its conclusion, there is only one manner in which things can be resolved. This ending is not to everyone's tastes.

The thing is, the game starts to roll the credits a good five to ten minutes before the actual ending, but then stops. Judging from the blogosphere, a good many people, sensing what is coming next, choose to take that as the end of the game and stop there. Not because they've stopped enjoying the gameplay, but because they want to pretend that what comes next njever happened. They feel it's a better story if they stop there.

Another example is Shadow of the Colossus. Throughout that game, the player is given the sense that what they are doing is wrong, and that with each colossus defeated they are making things palpably worse for everyone concerned, including their own character. Some people choose to stop playing before finishing the quest - again, not through dissatisfaction with the gameplay, but because of a desire to avert the otherwise inescapable tragic conclusion.

That's wrong, isn't it? It's like making an alternate ending to Death of a Salesman where nobody dies and everybody rediscovers their lost love of life. The point is the tragedy. The point is the experience.

I say this, but then I look at Braid. That is a fantastically deep and moving game, right through the main story and concluding with the final level. And that's what I thought for six months or so, until I found out about the bonus stars. Suddenly it was revealed I hadn't finished the game, and the new ending turned everything into a contrived mess about nuclear physics.

I am quite happy to say there are no bonus stars. I am quite happy to take the ending which I liked, and ignore everything that came afterwards. It is an exponentially better game this way. I see this as no different to loving the original Dune novels and ignoring the Kevin J. Anderson / Brian Herbert rubbish which has come out recently.

How do I reconcile this? On the one hand, finishing a story early is deliberately refusing to engage with the authorial vision, and denies you the right to claim to have genuinely experienced the work. On the other hand, a little wilfull blindness can allow you to perceive art and quality where otherwise there may only have been mediocrity.

Thoughts, anyone?

NB: No spoilers please!

Coraline Trailer

Personally, I'd forgotten that Coraline was still heading for our theatres. It's looking to be a far better attempt to take Neil Gaiman to the big screen than the lacklustre Mirrormask, plus it's great to see Henry Selick finally getting some credit for Nightmare Before Christmas rather than Tim Burton.

RIP Michael Crichton

Author Michael Crichton died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Crichton is most famous for his science-fiction novels, including The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere and Prey. He was also the creator of medical drama ER.

Crichton gained fame and notoriety in his later years for his fierce scepticism towards the idea of global warming, the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Whether or not you're a fan of his politics (I'm not), his books are highly entertaining, particularly his earlier writing. If you've never read a Michael Crichton novel, can I suggest you all go out and commemorate his work by reading The Great Train Robbery which (a) is excellent and (b) has the most consistently absurd misuse of period dialogue ever to appear in a novel.

Gummi Battle of Pelennor Fields

Kill Ten Rats has backhandedly drawn my attention to these folks, who have recreated Tolkien's Battle of Pelennor Fields using candy, including a bitching licorice Minas Tirith. Check it out.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Those who know me will recall I was not impressed by the first Narnia film. Yesterday I was delighted to discover that Prince Caspian, although derivative and occasionally awkward, is worlds better than its gormless predecessor.

In Caspian the four Pevensie children return to Narnia to find that a thousand years have passed since their reign as Kings and Queens. Caer Paravel is reduced to ruins and the Narnians have been hunted to the brink of extinction by the vicious Telmarines. The children unite with the exiled Prince Caspian to reawaken the Narnians, defeat the Telmarines and return Aslan to his people.

Those expecting a faithful adaptation of the book will be disappointed; the movie gleefully dances around CS Lewis' plot, totally ignoring key aspects while liberally interjecting epic battles. That's fine by me; Prince Caspian was always the dud book in the Chronicles by my estimation, and that the movie wrings a watchable story from the tripe therein is little short of genius.

More to the point, Prince Caspian skillfully identifies the key themes of the book and puts them front and centre. Where the first film glossed over a lot of the Christian symbolism, Caspian makes it abundantly clear that Aslan is a surrogate Jesus, and most of the character arcs are really about faith and innocence. The fact that the movie embraces its source material allows the Narnia magic to really start flowing, and in the end the religious themes are no more offensive than Zeus turning up in a Hercules movie.

Anna Popplewell as Susan is by far the best of the lead actors, with Ben Barnes as Caspian and Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin running a distant second. The CGI characters are handled adequately, although the mouse Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard) isn't quite the triumph fans might have wanted. The Harry Gregson-Williams musical score is perfectly adequate but not exactly his best work.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the movie is that it never finds a unique visual style. There's nothing here that you haven't already seen in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter; in fact, certain scenes seem like shot-for-shot homage. It's like Walden Media chose not to hire their own concept artist, and instead just got their crew to rewatch a bunch of genre classics.

Prince Caspian is not the best fantasy movie ever made, but it's an entire exponential better than I was expecting, and ends up being pretty recommendable. The next Narnia book, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is my favourite of the bunch, so if they can keep up this level of quality for at least one more film I'll be a very happy filmgoer.

Vast, Cool, Unsympathetic

Stolen from Toby A on Facebook.

A Very Quiet Nerdgasm

It's like all my geeky Xmases have come at once. Or, like, maybe, two or three of them. I should save some Xmases for later, probably.

For example, Doctor Who: Season Four (or *sigh* Thirty) is out, and it's reasonably entertaining, even if Russell T Davies has managed to design yet another monster based on bodily contents and fart sounds. Spoilers under this link.

Also, Buffy is apparently sleeping with women now. Or a woman. The good news is it's not Kennedy, and the bad news is it's not Willow. Predictable fan uproar is already well underway. It's hilarious that if you type "Buffy" and "Satsu" into the Google toolbar it will predict you might also want the word "bed".

Author Stephen King has stepped into the videogame politics ring and started punching. He's blasted Massachusetts legislation which would criminalise purchases of games by minors. Is this a prelude to a raft of King-related survival horror? I can only hope!

And much-derided games-to-films director Uwe Boll has promised to hang up his saucy directing beret if presented with a one-million-signature petition. Attention whore that he is, he's probably just trying to get us to go see his latest film Postal. PS - DO NOT SEE HIS LATEST FILM POSTAL.

RIP Arthur C Clarke

Prolific science-fiction author Arthur C Clarke passed away 19 March 2008 in Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Clarke will be remembered as the author of novels such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendevous With Rama, The City And The Stars, and Childhood's End.

50 Most Significant Sci-Fi Novels Meme

Via Cap'n Oblivious:

Below is Time's most significant SF novels between 1953-2006.

The meme part of this works like so: Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those that are seriously overrated, and put a star next to the ones you love.

Dust Forms Words note: The original meme used italics for "started but never finished", but because I don't do that with books ever I've replaced it with something more relevant.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert *
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick *
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish *
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester *
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman *
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson *
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson *
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner *
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester *
46. Starship Trooper, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

33 out of 50. I don't do too badly, there. Actually, it's entirely possible I've read Childhood's End and/or Caves of Steel and completely forgotten it. For some reason a lot of Asimov and Clarke just goes in one eyeball and out the other. I think it's something about those horrible 70s pulp covers that so many editions of their work are saddleed with. And I've read one-third of the first Foundation trilogy, so do I get a third of a point there?

I have to say I can't completely agree with a list that includes Lord of Light and The Silmarillion and leaves out The Shining, I Robot and Flowers for Algernon, but I guess that's not the point of the meme.

Next post will be actual content, I promise.

A Scanner Darkly

Just saw A Scanner Darkly, and I'm of mixed opinions.

On the one hand, director Richard Linklater delivers a suprisingly faithful adaptation of Phillip K Dick's story of near future drug dystopia. A cast including Keanu Reaves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr deliver some excellent performances, and the film's unique rotoscoped visual style is unique and impressive.

On the other hand, though, Linklater appears to have no real feel for pacing or story continuity, and doesn't really achieve either a coherent science-fiction conspiracy story or Dick's mind-warping tale of drug abuse and its consequences.

The strongest parts of the film are the drug-warped Tarantino-esque conversations, and some of the very satisfying plot-twist reveals. The characters are well drawn and visually compelling. However, the film never really capitalises on any of these strengths, seeming almost scared of developing intensity and momentum. A very sedate and understated musical score contributes to a sense of aimlessness throughout the movie.

The film also ends on something of a turgid note. The transcendant monologues and images that conclude Phillip Dick's original book translate poorly to the screen under Linklater's authorship, and the movie finishes with a thoroughly butchered and near-incomprehensible text paraphrasing of the powerful author's note from the final pages of A Scanner Darkly.

As far as adaptations go, it unobjectionably translates the source material into a visual medium. But ultimately it adds nothing new to the work and suffers from a lack of real inspiration which means it's unlikely to convert new fans to Dick's writing.

Margaret Atwood Must Destroy All Humans

[News] [Literature]

I've been pretty dismissive of blogs as a social medium; largely because they encourage people to use their idealised inside-on-the-outside persona to interact with the idealised icons of others in a substitute for real social interaction or actually developing social skills. (Not that I engage in much of that "real developing social skills" - it's just that I'm making a conscious choice.)

So naturally my girlfriend, a long-time blogger, had some mocking to do when I started The Dust Forms Words. "But there'll be actual content!" I pleaded; it was all as nought in the face of her tofu-fuelled powers of mockery.

As an incentive for my girlfriend to read my blog (and also because the idea is just cool) I offer the following evidence that Margaret Atwood Must Destroy All Humans (courtesy of Collision Detection, which I found through the wonderful Grand Text Auto).

Margaret Atwood, in what is either:
a) an act of inspired genious,
b) a clever marketing scam, or
c) a blatant act of contempt towards humanity
has taken to signing books via a telepresence robot. She sits in, say, Florida, wiggling a robo-pen, and the miracle of modern technology recreates her movements in, say, Sydney into the book of some unsuspecting plebian. A touch impersonal, you say? Never fear, there's a webcam. You can see her smiling face in all its two-dimensional glory and talk to her while she wiggles the robo-pen.

This elevates the already surreal book-signing phenomenon to a whole new meta-level of absurdity, and I love it. If the search for meaning in getting geniouses with poor social skills to deface your clean expensive product with their bizarre scrawls was a game, then this is (to me) like a whole expansion pack jammed with robot-orientated content goodness.

I plan on making use of this telepresence signing thing. I can happily exhibit a copy of the Blind Assassin, and say, "Look, it was signed by a robot driven by the insane disembodied presence of Margaret Atwood! This proves that I bought the book, attended an Atwood-themed event, and was sufficiently insignificant to her that she saw no need to direct her paper-signing killbot to extinguish my life!" I'll be the talk of town, and small children will envy me.

Now we need to get some of our more youth-challenged bestsellers like William Gibson and Ray Bradbury into these things as soon as possible and record the results; with a little foresight, we can get Stephen King scribbling "To My Constant Reader" to devoted fans long after his rotting corpse has been safely disposed of. Celebrations are in order.