Thursday Book

The Resurrectionist - James Bradley

I was hooked from the first page of this tale of a medical student in early 19th century London who becomes more involved in grave robbing than he'd care to and falls in love with a lady of ill repute. In no time I was two thirds of the way into the story. At which point I increasingly had to force myself to get through the rest.

Around the midpoint of the book, all the relationships and characters that drew me into it were destroyed by the narrator's descent into immorality. It is, I suppose, a fantastic literary device, but it had the unfortunate outcome of removing all those elements I liked best. Personally, I'd have preferred it as a more low key, less destructive story. In particular, I - perhaps pathologically - found myself rather touched by the reserved and bittersweet romance in the book's first half.

Not Bioshocked Enough

So I bought Bioshock now that it's cheap. I wasn't expecting it to be my cup of tea, and I'm disappointed to say that my instinct seems to have been pretty spot on. Compared to its predecessor, System Shock 2 - which I have never played beyond the beginning, to my great chagrin - the set up just seems weak.

I don't understand why everyone I meet wants to kill me. I don't understand why when they do kill me I just respawn in a vita-chamber, but when I kill them they stay dead. I don't understand how you can hack a computer using little squares to re-route water. And most criminally of all: this game just isn't scaring me.

There was one bit that did give me chills, where you know there's someone or something around the corner, and when you turn around the corner the lights go out. But that's it. System Shock 2 didn't even need set pieces to frighten you. Just surviving was scary, crouching in a shadowed corner with a half broken pistol, waiting for one of the Many to pass you by while it lamented pathetically about its lost humanity.

By contrast, I can't help but think that Bioshock is just another shooter. Especially in the sense that you spend most of the time shooting bad guys, with very little tension or suspense. And where in System Shock 2 the absence of character interaction nurtured a desperate sense of isolation, here - where there are plenty of people around, and they just all want to kill me - it makes me think that Bioshock is something of a step backwards.

Thursday Comic

Whiteout - Greg Rucka, Steve Lieber et al.

Whiteout begins with a chunk of hard-boiled monologue from our heroine Carrie Stetko - the sole representative of American law enforcement on the entire continent of Antarctica - about 'knowing the ice' and whether or not she trusts her gut. It's a slight misfire, I think, for a book where the best aspects are the veracity of its setting and its ambiguous characterisations.

Rucka's clearly put a lot of effort into researching Antarctic conditions and politics, and he tells a plausible, well motivated mystery thriller that happens to be set in the most inhospitable and least populated region of the planet. Lieber's art fits the tone, with sparse, sketchy drawings that make good use of the white page.

Whiteout is a low-key, offbeat book that's worth looking into if you enjoy quirky stories of suspense.

Paprika + The Matrix + Nolan = ???

I don't know the answer to that sum, but whatever it is - yes please!

Hat tip Twitch, as ever.

Friday Videogame Babe Blogging

So I finally got around to fixing my install of Steam and playing Portal. GLaDOS totally won me over, especially in the final sequence, and with that fantastic song.

Definitely my kind of murderous AI.

Thursday Book

House of Suns - Alistair Reynolds

Six million years ago, Abigail Gentian split her personality and memories into a thousand clones and launched them into deep space. Now, two such Gentians - Campion and Purslane - are in trouble. They've broken Abigail's rules by falling in love, and they're decades late for the latest reunion. They hope that their amnesiac robot guest will curry them some favour - but little do they know that they've become mixed up in posthuman mysteries that, after all this time, could finally bring an end to the Gentian line.

Alistair Reynold's stories typically have as their underpinning a strong sense that civilisations are probably ephemeral, and that the clock is ticking for humanity. In House of Suns, however, he explores the other side of the question: how might humanity survive for longer than an astronomical sneeze? If it does, how might it change? And how (through long lived individuals and time dilation) might it stay the same?

Although I think Revelation Space and Chasm City are two of Reynold's strongest works, I also think that House of Suns - like Century Rain and Pushing Ice - is yet more proof that he's currently doing his best work outside the Revelation Space series. Reynolds benefits from being able to shape the entire Universe around his ideas like the vastest of all storytelling tools. He does this here to perhaps a greater extent than he's ever done, combining the astronomical and personal scales with a dash of that Gothic, anachronistic style that will be familiar to fans.

:-p

After all these years, I finally got pictures of him doing this. Usually he stops in the time it takes me to grab the camera.

Monday Movie: The Insider

Jeffrey Wigand used to be a top scientist in a big tobacco company, and now he wants to spill the beans on how cigarette manufacturers are manipulating the nicotine in their products - even if everything he has is ruined in the process. But when his interview is finally on tape, the corporate lawyers of CBS refuse to allow its broadcast, worrying about their culpability (and the effect of controversy on their share prices). It's up to dedicated newsman Lowell Bergman to get Wigand's story out into the open before a smear campaign destroys the man's credibility - and his life.

When I've not seen one of his films for a while, I tend to just think of Michael Mann as the one working American director who seems to still have an aptitude for action scenes, but The Insider stands as a fantastic reminder that Mann's true strengths are his ability to convey intense dialogue and evocative ambience. Words fly like machinegun bullets throughout this dramatisation of a true story, but there's also great care taken to convey emotion and atmosphere.

Thursday Book

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

An interesting one, this. Wilde's wit is evident from the first page, with the decadent Lord Henry espousing his callous views on why one should live a shallow life of opulence and beauty. And although the plot of the book seems to be told from the perspective of a more conventional morality, the central conceit of the story - that the incomparably beautiful Dorian Gray is able to hide his predilection for sin and vice because the inherent ugliness of such a life affects his supernatural portrait instead of his own flawless face - arguably assumes that goodness and good looks are one and the same.

But regardless of what Wilde was actually trying to say with the book (Victorian society seemed to think that he was saying he should be sentenced to hard labour) something this well written, with luxurious sentences that flow right off the page, is an undeniable pleasure to read.

Edge on to the sun

Image source
Credit: NASA/STScI/AURA

So today's the day (perhaps not the Saturnian day, but close enough) that Saturn is at equinox. The gas giant's axis - and therefore also its ring plane - is neither tilted towards or away from the sun. With the sun's light striking them edge on, the Cassini imaging team's favourite frame of reference - the illuminated/unilluminated side of the rings - will be briefly meaningless, before turning on its head.

The Cassini homepage has a nice article on the event here, but as always, you're probably best off checking out Emily Lakdawalla's eloquent description at the Planetary Society blog here.

Disclaimer: the Hubble image above actually shows Saturn from 1996-2000, leaving an equinox and heading into the northern winter that would greet Cassini.

Monday Movie: Return of the Jedi

Return of Jedi has always been my favourite Star Wars film, mostly because of the stonking great space battle, and because Lando gets to be a hero. But then let's not forget Luke's attempts to redeem Darth Vader, the impossibly tear-jerking spectacle of dead Ewoks, and - yes, I'll admit that it figures as well - a certain golden bikini.

The best cut, in my opinion, is the only one that I don't actually own on DVD - the first Special Edition, after Lucas made the ending properly epic, but before Hayden Christensen's dull-eyed ghost was slipped in.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho...

I've not had the time or energy to get much done these past couple of weeks, but I've got some time off coming up, and the chance to get back at my creative projects. Hopefully I'll have some stuff to show you all before the end of the month...

Thursday Comic

Polly and the Pirates - Ted Naifeh

Polly Pringle is a prim and proper girl who aspires to be just like the prim and proper mother she never knew. Living in a maritime city where there's no clear distinction between the ships and the buildings, she's the one girl in her boarding school who never gets into trouble and always does as she's told. That is, until she's suddenly abducted by pirates who believe that she's actually the daughter of the courageous and honourable Pirate Queen - and their best bet at recovering a lost treasure map.

These Thursday posts are supposed to be part of my impetus to read through the stack of books and comics on my bedside table, but I haven't had any time at all for reading over this past week, and looking for something that I could re-read in one sitting and write a post about, this adorable little book immediately leapt out at me. Polly and the Pirates is funny and adventurous, it's full of memorable characters and it eventually manages to be quite touching as Polly grows to give a damn about a group of scurvy buccaneers who probably need her a lot more than she needs them.

I've sung Naifeh's praises as an artist before, and I think that his diverse cast of caricatures - from an impossibly petite schoolmistress to a razor-toothed, goblin-like pirate - manages to cultivate the perfect tone and feel for the story. His writing's on top form here as well, with plenty of swashbuckling action and piratical repartee. Pretty much the only the complaint I have with this book is that three years later there's still not been a sequel.

Monday Movie: Hana-Bi

Director, lead actor, writer, editor etc. etc. Takeshi Kitano reached widespread acclaim with this tale of a quiet, unassuming police officer trying to give his terminally ill wife a pleasant send-off - while dealing with the fallout of a bust gone wrong and the loan sharks who paid for her treatment.

Told in Kitano's inimitably static style, the relationship between husband Nishi and his unnamed wife at first seems reserved, even indifferent. But as the story progresses, the lengths that Nishi is prepared to go to for her become clear, and we're treated to touching insights into their understated love.

Hana-Bi is certainly a sober, softly spoken film, but it's by no means heavy. Kitano keeps things bittersweet and dryly humorous, interspersed with his trademark form of after-the-fact slapstick, and a moving score from Joe Hisaishi draws you into the gentle pace.

Friday Omar Blogging

Omar Little in his Sunday best.

Thursday Comic

Bleach (Vols 1-4) - Tite Kubo

Although I can certainly see why Eiichiro Oda's One Piece is the best regarded of the popular boys' mangas, I have to admit that its interminable, slow-paced fights scenes started to grate a bit after reading seven volumes of it. Compared to the high-seas nonsense of One Piece, the concept of Bleach - high-schooler secretly fights ghosts gone bad - may seem more prosaic and cliched, but you're at least guaranteed that something will happen between the first and last pages of a book.

But more than that, what drew me back to this comic were the memorable and colourful characters - whether it's Rukia, an ancient soul reaper lying low as a school girl, with her frosty exterior and courageous heart; or sensitive giant Chad who fights spirits he can't even see using sheer brute strength.

Okay, there are much more 'worthy' books out there, but Bleach is lively, fun and full of personality.

I am being a busy bee...

(Cross-posted to my other blog.)

Thurday Book

The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Greene's amoral tale of idealistic American agent Alden Pyle interfering with the war between the French and the Viet Minh has often been hailed as prophetic. It also happens to be tautly written, evocative and thematically complex.

Yes, the way it's framed around the competition between Pyle and an old Englishman for the affections of a child-like Vietnamese woman has racist and sexist overtones, but that's kind of the point - that for all their posturing and concern, neither of them every truly considers her capable of independent action.

Whether he meant it to or not, Greene's book would go on to become emblematic of the next half-century of American foreign policy.

Messy Moon

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image Source

The influence that Saturn's moons have on its rings is nicely illustrated by this Cassini image of the feathery mess Prometheus has made of the F-ring. (There's a good description of Prometheus' shenanigans here.)

I'm not going to write any kind of comprehensive post on the anniversary of the moon landings, because there's enough of that elsewhere, but I think a nice addendum to the celebrations can be found in this article by Mars Rover big-wig and Planetary Society president Jim Bell.

Yes, the Apollo missions were a fantastic acheivemement. But complaining about the lack of effective human spaceflight since then ignores the massive sucess of our unmanned exploration of the solar system.

Feynman Online

So it turns out that Bill Gates owns the rights to the recordings of Richard Feynman giving some general lectures on science and physics. If you have Silverlight installed, you can watch them here.

I watched the first lecture - in which Feynman describes the nature of gravity and orbits, both topics dear to my heart - during my lunch break on Friday. It's great to see how Feynman was able to be entertaining while actually teaching physics. He even writes an equation on a blackboard. By comparison, the kind of science shows on television at the moment seem both intellectually bankrupt and boring.

And it's also great to hear how the man often described as the second greatest physicist of the twentieth century (after Einstein) sounds very much like a regular guy, with his fantastic Brooklyn accent.

Anyway, if you want to get some real science in you, please check out at least the first lecture. Captions for the hearing impaired come as standard.

Friday Blog Blogging

It still needs some work, but I've put together a crappy new blag. In part it's a place for updates on the games I'm working on (although major news - such as new releases - will still get posted to Space Cat Rocket Ship as well).

But I've also thought for some time that text-only games could do with an equivalent of the Indie Games Blog: a place where a screenshot and short description can be posted for new IF. Too often, otherwise not bad games seem to get just a blank post on the IFDB or IFWiki, and I think it might be cool to be able to get a peak at what's inside the game itself - even if it turns out to be yet another 'my first game' game.

To that end, I give you:

Text Games for Space Crows
http://gamesforcrows.blogspot.com/

New District 9 Trailer

Setting quite a different tone, but also starting to look like an extremely well put together movie.

Hat tip: Twitch, as always.

Monday Movie: The Duellists

When the dispassionate D'Hubert is sent to arrest fellow soldier Feraud for duelling, Feraud takes it about as badly as he possibly could, doggedly seeking D'Hubert out time and again, year after year. And despite his better nature, honour moves D'Hubert to accept each challenge and risk his life in each new duel.

The Duellists - Ridley Scott's first feature film, adapted from a short story by Joseph Conrad - takes in gorgeous landscapes, gritty period realism and tense duels, while musing on the nature of honour and duty.

Teaser

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 48

Part 48: Ever After

The sun woke me, shining through the open window, red light against my eyelids. I rolled over. The sheets beside me were slightly disturbed, an indentation in the pillow, a warmth lingering to my side. I swung my legs out of bed, and stood, throwing a robe around myself.

The marble floor was strangely warm beneath my bare feet.

She glided into the room quietly, treading carefully, naked and drying her hair with a towel.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “You're always up so early.”

She shrugged, brassy metal flowing organically into the gesture. “The pain used to wake me. Fear of the dangers of the world. Worry for my uncle. I suppose I got into the habit of waking at sunrise. Don't let it bother you. You should lie in.”

“I can't. Knowing you're up and about.”

She pulled down a dress from a coat hangar hooked on the wardrobe door, stepped into it. I zipped her up. She slipped her arm in mine and said, casually, “I think a visitor may have slept on our doorstep.”

“Is the doorbell broken?”

“You know how she is.”

We walked downstairs, arm in arm, her feet pattering sharply on the marble steps.

Sigrid looked up at us as we opened the door and stepped out onto the street, her calm eyes waiting for us as if she'd known the exact moment we'd leave the house and had aimed her gaze accordingly. She looked lost without her rifle. Incomplete.

“You should have woken us,” Una said. “You could've slept on the sofa.”

Sigrid barely considered the idea. “Can hardly sleep inside anymore. Or lying down. Not used to it.”

Una met my eye. The world changed, but our sleep patterns stayed the same.

Sigrid stood. “I just came to say goodbye.”

I wasn't surprised. “Where are you going to go?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “Across the sea. Into the Twisted Forests. Anywhere away from here. I can't make it in Unity City. It's too strange, and everyone else seems too calm and quiet. And I don't want to stick around anywhere nearby either. Too many people from Fortress City wandering around on the wrong side of the wall, still loving the memory of Kirkham and hating the people who killed him. Seen too many of their friends come here and wind up with Sky Spider machines in their heads.”

Una pulled Sigrid into a hug. The riflewoman bore it with obvious ill ease, uncomfortable to be so close to Sky Spider technology. When she turned to me, I just shook her hand.

“Hey,” she said with a toss of her head, “maybe I'll go and finally find EON-2, see what it wanted to say all this time.”

She turned away from us and walked off, into the perfectly white streets of Unity City. We watched her until the road carried her out of sight. She didn't look back.

“I'd be dead several times over if not for her,” I remembered, all of a sudden.

“And she'll die out there,” Una said coldly.

I laughed. “And we'll die in here. That's life. Human life, anyway.”

Una laughed too, looking down at herself, her six, oil-slick black, arthropodal legs, her polished brass bust, her human arms. “Human life isn't what we thought it was anyway.”

The sun had crept up higher into the sky, its white light almost painful as it played on the city's bright rooftops. Figures stirred in the distance, some of them with their heads wrapped in glowing coils, others tall, ethereal, androgynous.

“Our kind of human life is well on the way out,” I said.

Una squeezed my arm. “Everything changes,” she said. “What matters is breakfast.”

She lead me inside.

We sat on the balcony to eat, looking out at the incandescent city. Immense forms moved on the horizon, reshaping the world with slow, powerful grace. And my hand rested in hers.

We looked at one another and smiled.

THE END

Moon-Moon Eclipse

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

So Cassini has shown us eclipses of one kind or another enough times. Saturn is a lot bigger than its moons, so they're always throwing their little shadows onto its clouds, or wandering into the shade of their gargantuan parent.

But around Saturn's equinox, something new becomes possible. With the sun and Saturn's moons all on a similar plane, an observer on one moon could now potentially see one of the other moons blotting out their view of the sun. Which is what's happened here, with Enceladus casting its shadow onto Mimas.

There's a time-lapse video of the event that you can watch here.

Monday Movie: James and the Giant Peach

James has been living with his two horrible aunts ever since his parents were eaten by a rhinoceros. He's lonely, mistreated and miserable. All that changes when he grows an enormous peach using magical crocodile tongues, and sails away with the transformed invertebrates who live inside it. He'll have to face up to a mechanical shark and a crew of drowned pirates (among other dangers) along the way, but it seems he may finally get the chance to fulfil his parents' dream of reaching New York.

Director Henry Selick adaptated Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach into a mostly animated, part live-action fantasy full of magic and adventure. Stepping out from Tim Burton's shadow, Selick created an eerie, visually rich dreamscape suffused with the most fantastic dreams - and darkest fears - of childhood. It's marred only by that usual blight of American animation: gratuitous singing.

I HAS A ZZZZZZ

"Dany Boon est Bazil."

Twitch have all eight of the new teaser trailers for Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film - each of them focusing on a different character - right here, on the other side of the link that I know you just clicked on.

Yes, Dominique Pinon plays one of the characters. Why do you ask?

Thursday Comic

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life - Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim is an aimless twenty-something in a rock band that's not really very good. He shares a bed with his gay room-mate and is obsessing over one girl while dating another. Oh, and that first girl is using a sub-space portal in his head to deliver packages for Amazon.ca.

Lee O'Malley has a perfect ear for hip, self-aware, snappy dialogue, something he put to excellent use in his earlier Lost at Sea. In many ways, I think Scott Pilgrim is sharper and funnier, with its self-deprecating humour and constant video game references. And then you get to the last act, which sees the main plot arc kick into gear in a sequence that's kind of like the first moment in a musical when everyone starts singing, only the rules are taken from a fighting game instead.

It's a sequence that I'm certain will be amazing in Edgar Wright's upcoming film adaptation, but it seems a little rushed, and for something that should really be setting up the plot of this whole series, it leaves a lot of important questions unanswered. Lee O'Malley doesn't seem like the kind of guy to write about a woman as a passive trophy to be won by fighting her ex-boyfriends, and yet that's undeniably the set-up we're left with by the end of this volume. I'd like to imagine that future instalments acknowledge and subvert this, but as will be the case with most new readers, I only have the first one to judge.

It's weird, because, as I've mentioned frequently before, I'm usually all for mixing up the mundane and surreal, but the impression I've got from this first Scott Pilgrim book is that I much prefer the moments when it's being down-to-earth to when it's hyperactively adhering to old-school video game tropes.

Happy Earth Birthday, Cassini!

NASA's Cassini mission has been orbiting Saturn for five Earth years as of June 30, 2009. That's about one sixth of a Saturnian year, enough time for the spacecraft to have observed seasonal changes in the planet, its moons and sunlight's angle on the dramatic rings.

Visit the Cassini homepage here.

Monday Movie: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

World famous oceanographer Steve Zissou is out to find the mysterious shark that ate his best friend in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. On the way, he'll be forced to deal with pirates, the airline co-pilot who might be his son, and his own fading legend.

I'm not sure exactly why I like this movie so much. Something about the combination of quirky-but-believable characters and impossible sea creatures (provided by animator Henry Selick), along with the brightly coloured sets, lo-fi synth music and frequent, dead-pan absurdity all seem to strike some off-beat chord in that peculiar organ I call a heart. A film that defies genres and explanations, there's probably no way to know if you'll like this one until you've seen it.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 47

Previously: “Kirkham was dead, the walls of Fortress City breached. Now Una, Sigrid and I faced the alien wrath of Prometheus.”

Part 47: Prometheus No More

As the house rained down around us, Una pushed me beneath herself. A brick bounced off her back with a metallic clang. I stumbled over shattering masonry, pulling Una along behind me. And we were outside, and safe.

Or not. Looking up, we saw Prometheus closer than ever - towering over us, its long, jointed legs splayed around the house like a spider over its prey. Una glided up beside me, rubbing her back with one hand.

Prometheus lowered its great, expressionless, human face, mouth open. I could feel my hair starting to bristle. I took Una's hand in mine.

Blue electricity began to crackle around us. Una squeezed my hand. “Well,” she said, “I suppose this is it.”

I pulled her closer and kissed her temple. The most peculiar sensation began to build in the pit of my stomach. If you've never almost been imploded by a Sky Spider machine, I can't really describe what it felt like.

But I noticed immediately when it began to fade away. The arcs of ethereal lightning stopped with a sudden pop. And the slick black skin of Prometheus began slowly to brighten and turn grey.

“Because we killed Kirkham?” Una mused.

I pointed to the almost imperceptible figure riding on the back of Prometheus. “Or because we had a little help from a see-through friend of ours.”

Like sunlight piercing the clouds, Prometheus began to glow with internal light, its replica of Kirkham's face warping into something stranger, and more reassuringly Sky Spider in nature. Before it had become almost completely white, Prometheus had turned and begun walking away, stepping harmlessly through townhouses like it wasn't really there.

Sigrid stepped out of the rubble of the old cottage, brushing debris from her shoulders. “What happened?”

“Kirkham lost Prometheus,” I said.

Sigrid nodded. “Well, he's got no need for it where he is.”

Una stepped away from me, looking out over the ruins of Fortress City, dust and smoke still rising from it. “What a waste. Yet more people without homes and food and who knows what else.”

“They're free, at least,” I said. “Which is what you wanted.”

“Let's hope they're not too proud to turn down help from Remus and Unity City.”

“I didn't think you...”

She shrugged. “How else can they survive now?”

Sigrid was looking around with wide eyes. “Wait, back up a minute. What have you two been doing here?”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Enceladus Knowledge +1

Credit: NASA/JPL/SWRI/University of Colorado

"Our measurements imply that besides table salt, the grains also contain carbonates like soda. Both components are in concentrations that match the predicted composition of an Enceladus ocean," [Frank] Postberg [Cassini scientist for the cosmic dust analyzer at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany] said. "The carbonates also provide a slightly alkaline pH value. If the liquid source is an ocean, it could provide a suitable environment on Enceladus for the formation of life precursors when coupled with the heat measured near the moon's south pole and the organic compounds found within the plumes."

However, in another study published in Nature, researchers doing ground-based observations did not see sodium, an important salt component. That team notes that the amount of sodium being expelled from Enceladus is actually less than observed around many other planetary bodies. These scientists were looking for sodium in the plume vapor and could not see it in the expelled ice grains. They argue that if the plume vapor does come from ocean water, the evaporation must happen slowly deep underground, rather than as a violent geyser erupting into space.

Read the rest here.

It also well worth taking a peek at the explanation for the diagram above, which outlines several proposed models for Enceladus' plumes. These recent observations have ruled out model A, but the others (or some combination of them) are all candidates of various plausibility.

Sepia Equinox

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source

Here's another image of an equinox shadow on Saturn's rings, cast by Mimas as before, but this time in natural colour.

Monday Movie: The Scarlet Claw

Canada, the fog-enshrouded village of La Mort Rouge: the church bell tolls as a dying woman tries to draw attention to her plight. Not far away, her husband is debating a sceptical Sherlock Holmes at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Occult Society. Does a mysterious and supernatural beast roam the marshes of La Mort Rouge, searching for its next victim?

The Scarlet Claw is almost universally accepted as the best film to feature Basil Rathbone's portrayal of the world's most famous detective. Director Roy William Neill rises above his often quite workmanlike and unsubtle craftsmanship on other films in this series, evoking an eerie, shadowed ambience to relate a thrilling mystery with a fair few twists and turns.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 46

Previously: “Prometheus had clawed through the walls of Fortress City - not an outcome we'd expected when we confronted John Kirkham. The future of the city was hanging in the balance.”

Part 46: Sky Spiders Ex Machina

The ground shook as Prometheus ploughed through the buildings of Fortress City. Its impassive face - a perfect likeness of John Kirkham's golden mask - bobbed over chimneys and rooftops as they collapsed into a rising cloud of dust. Behind it, Kirkham's hot air balloon rose into the air, its burner flickering against the dull fabric of the envelope.

Una and I turned to flee from the half-ruined cottage. And right in front of us, Remus' glassy Sky Spider automaton stepped into existence, as if rounding an invisible corner. Its huge, inhuman hands rested on the shoulders of a stocky woman in faded military fatigues, looking rather bemused.

“Sigrid!” I exclaimed.

She grimaced a greeting as the automaton faded away behind her. “Some airy-fairy pretty boy - or maybe it was a woman - snatched me off that rusty old ship and told me you two were in trouble.”

Una shrugged. “Oh, you know: same old, same old.”

Sigrid's eyes widened as she saw Prometheus tearing through mouldy, smog-blackened brickwork to reach us. “I don't see what I can do to help, save give you some company on the passage to the hereafter. Shouldn't we be running?”

“Have you ever shot down a balloon?” I asked.

Sigrid shrugged. “There's a first time for everything. Can I have that rifle?”

I handed Sigrid the rifle Una had borrowed from a deserting soldier, and she immediately dropped to one knee, sighting down the length of the barrel. I was about to say something when she fired. Una and I both jumped.

“Damn it,” Sigrid muttered, and started adjusting the little metal sight at the end of the barrel. “Who was supposed to be looking after this thing?”

Una said, “I got the impression its previous owner wasn't too interested in maintaining his equipment.”

Sigrid pressed the stock to her shoulder again. “Well it's a crying shame.”

Straight ahead, the row of dilapidated houses across the street parted like a veil of filthy mist before Prometheus' clattering, arthropodal legs. Sigrid barely seemed to notice.

She fired. The basket of the hot air balloon suddenly erupted into a shower of flames, disintegrating and dropping detritus onto the rooftops below.

“Shot the fuel tanks,” Sigrid yelled, over the avalanche of footsteps that heralded Prometheus' advance. “Now let's run like mad.”

She immediately sprinted towards the door, only to be thrown back into the room when one of Prometheus' peculiar electric blue missiles struck the side of the cottage. Another hit the wall with the collapsed, gaping window, and the whole rotten building began slowly to topple forwards.

I grabbed Una as she grabbed me, and bricks began to rain down around us.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: We've been sure that it really must be it for our heroes enough times before, but now, surely, it really, really must be all over for our heroes next week! There's no surviving the merciless point-blank assault of Prometheus! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Thursday Book

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

I enjoy walking for long distances, but I hate running for even the shortest amount of time, so I can't actually comment on how much this book is of interest to runners. For die-hard fans of Murakami (such as, you know, me), however, this is at least worth a look, as it's possibly the most autobiographical work we're likely to get from a writer who's notoriously uncomfortable with his fame.

Murakami's been running for as long as he's been writing, an attempt to counteract the sedentary life he was expecting to lead as an author, and he sees these two parts of his life as being closely intertwined. It's a side of the man that I think some of his fans might find surprising, although his general lack of competitiveness (except against himself) seems somewhat more in tune with the thoughtful tone of his books.

Anyway, chances are that if you're a Murakami fan, you've already got this book, or at least added it your list - and if you're unfamiliar with the author, there are probably much better places to start than this. Unless you're a runner, of course.

DVD Review: The Good The Bad The Weird

At the start of Kim Ji-woon's The Good The Bad The Weird, three Korean misfits, their homeland occupied by the Japanese, converge on the same train in 1930s Manchuria. Following close in their wake are trouble and a whole hail of bullets. And that also happens to be what they're walking into as well.

First up, there's Yoon Tae-goo (played by Song Kang-ho, previously a bleach-haired and irresponsible father in The Host), a wreckless thief who just hopes to rob the train of its valuables. Next comes Park Chang-yi (played by Lee Byung-hun, the lead in Kim's earlier A Bittersweet Life) a vicious bandit on a mission to steal a mysterious map from the train. And pursuing Chang-yi is the bounty hunter Park Do-won - played by Jung Woo-sung, who I've never actually seen in anything before, but whose purpose here seems to be to look as non-threatening as possible while racking up the highest body count of any of these three anti-heroes.


Naturally Tae-goo, the Weird, winds up finding the map, forming a distrustful alliance with Do-won, the (relatively) Good, and then gallivanting across the Manchurian desert towards the map's destination with Chang-yi, the Bad, in hot pursuit. All three lead actors acquit themselves brilliantly. Song's comedic performance as the Weird could quite easily have stolen the whole film, but Lee's bandit exudes perfect, graceful menace, and Jung, while he may seem to get much less screen time than the other two, also gets to command the action scenes, cutting a swathe through Manchuria without batting an eyelid.

This film is an action-adventure, through-and-through. Every time you think that Kim must have surely reached a plateau and run out of ways to escalate the action, he pulls out the kitchen sink and throws it into the mix. By the final act, Tae-goo's motorcycle is being pursued by Chang-yi, Do-won and two rival gangs on horseback, while the whole lot of them are shelled and machine-gunned by the Japanese army. And while the eventual three-way showdown is far from unexpected, it still manages to feel fresh and bring a few interesting things to the table.


I've mentioned before that Kim has clearly taken inspiration from Leone in the past, but although this film does borrow a lot of the language of the western - amoral vagabonds embarking on violent misadventures in pursuit of riches - the biggest inspiration here seems to be classic Spielberg adventures like Indiana Jones. There's the treasure map, the huge real world sets that are inevitably blown to bits, the stunt-intensive chase with people leaping between vehicles and being dragged along the ground, and the general feeling that the film is doing everything it can to present you with adventure and spectacle at every turn.

Of those Korean films that are released in the west, it's almost routine to expect visual perfection, and Kim certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard here. The action direction's not quite as tight as in A Bittersweet Life, but events are always presented in a way that maximises their impact, be they moments of action or atmosphere. The sound design is excellent as well - not just because of the bombastic, multicultural, frequently anachronistic soundtrack, but because Kim knows when to let the action speak for itself, and also because he clearly understands that gunshots (of which there are plenty) should be loud and emphasised, rather than muffled or over-stylised as they often are in action films.


The Good The Bad The Weird is a rip-roaring, violent, characterful, colourful and sometimes hilarious action-adventure. It's a new entry in a genre that has been pretty poorly served so far this century, and watching it, it's strange to realise that. This is flat-out entertainment of the highest calibre, and anyone with an interest in chases, explosions, gunfights and gags should run out and find this film immediately.

HAY GUYS

HOWS IT GOIN

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 45

Previously: “Prometheus had clawed through the walls of Fortress City - not an outcome we'd expected when we confronted John Kirkham. But it wasn't quite the rampage it seemed.”

Part 45: Birdwatching

“It's not moved?”

I shook my head. “Not a hair's breadth.”

Una shoved a brown paper bag at me. “I brought you food.”

“Thanks. And you found a rifle, I see.”

She shrugged. “I think its previous owner was in the act of deserting his post. He didn't seem to want it anymore.”

It had been hard work to find somewhere with a commanding view of Prometheus where you didn't have to walk up stairs to get there, but we'd found it in the end: a mould encrusted cottage that dated from times when Fortress City had fended off human enemies.

I'd set up a telescope aiming out of a gaping hole in the brickwork that probably used to be a window. Una sat down in the deckchair beside mine and laid the rifle across her lap.

“So,” she said, “you think Kirkham's just redrawn the borders? It's no longer him versus the Sky Spiders, but John Kirkham: zoo keeper.”

“Right. He's just going to sit up there and wait for everyone to come back to the city. If they come back at all.”

“They will,” Una said confidently. “There's nothing between here and the ocean except Circhester and the factory farms. They might be tempted to try looting the farms, but if they do they'll only wind up disrupting their own food chain. And Circhester will provide them precious little fun as well.”

“You know, people can be surprisingly decent in situations like this.”

Una leaned over to look through the telescope. “And surprisingly ruthless as well.”

I turned to look out at Fortress City and the giant black war machine sitting on top of it, insectile legs curled around the rubble of the buildings crushed beneath its bulk. “I keep looking at the area around Prometheus. Somehow I don't think Kirkham would want to be too far away from it.”

“I can see a lot of likely places. I wouldn't exactly care to wander up there and try searching for him, though. And even if we did find him - what then?”

“I'm not sure. Killing him might just remove whatever control we might ever hope to have over Prometheus.”

Una shrugged. “Or maybe it'll revert to whatever it was supposed to be doing before Kirkham stole it from the Sky Spiders. In any case, I can't see putting a bullet through Kirkham as being anything other than a positive step.”

I sighed. “Okay. Well, we can't sit here forever. If we don't make a move, Kirkham will.”

“What are you thinking?”

I shrugged. “Run away. Go back to Unity City. Stop worrying about who's oppressing who and relax. The whole problem with Fortress City is the people are living in fear, behind a wall and a load of big guns when they don't need to.”

Una smiled. “Tempting. But no. Don't let me stop you, though.”

I touched Una's shoulder and pulled her back from the telescope. “Look at that.”

“A hot air balloon. Is it the same one-?”

“I think so.”

“And you don't suppose?”

“Who else would you expect to find riding Kirkham's hot air balloon over Kirkham's stolen Sky Spider machine?”

Una stood up and brought the stock of the rifle to her shoulder. “It's still pretty low.”

“Do you really want to take the chance that it's Kirkham in there and not someone else trying to fight him?”

Una thought about it for a second. “Well, yes, actually.” Her finger tightened on the trigger and a look of almost childish mischievousness came over her face. “Are you a better shot than me, Perry?”

“Seriously, don't call me Perry. And I honestly have no idea.”

She sighted down the barrel and fired. We waited a few seconds, but nothing about the balloon seemed to change. Una pushed the rifle into my hands. “Well now we can find out.”

I worked the action and leant into the stock, taking careful aim, trying to correct for the range and the wind. Then I squeezed the trigger.

Again, no change in the balloon.

Una laughed suddenly. “Actually, I suppose we might both have hit it. It's not like it's going to just pop is it?”

“I'd imagine not.”

“If only Sigrid were here.”

In the distance, the silhouette of Prometheus began to rise, its legs unfolding steadily, joint by joint.

Una laughed again. I joined her. “Wonderful,” she said. “An opportunity to regroup and come up with a plan, and yet here we are: running from Prometheus yet again.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Showdown over Fortress City! It's human versus Sky Spider automaton, and there's no backing down! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Making Waves and Shadows

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source

Here's something you'll only see once in a Saturnian equinox. We already know that Saturn's moons play a big part in maintaining its rings - both adding material to them and 'shepherding' their edges. But here we can see the ripples that tiny (8km) moon Daphnis creates are themselves casting shadows onto the rest of the rings.

Daphnis' waves apparently have a vertical component of around a kilometer in height.

Thursday Comic

Batman: Hush (Volume 2) - Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee et al.

So here I am again for the second half of this superhero spectacle, and things are carrying on pretty much as they were before: still cramming in every notable figure in the Gotham City underworld, at breakneck pace, as part of an intricate plot that isn't nearly as carefully constructed as it seems to think it is.

The romantic aspect between Batman and Catwoman does show a little more chemistry here - I can't help but think that more tension could have been wrangled out of the way Selina Kyle has fallen for Batman while remaining disdainful of Bruce Wayne, but this book is more about being a notable collection of characters than any kind of love story. Huntress is back briefly in this volume, although there's no real resolution for her, and Oracle also (yay!) finally puts in an appearance as something other than a voice in everyone's ear.

My first impressions of Hush have pretty much held. If, like me, you've enjoyed Batman stories in other media and like the idea of having a Batman comic on your shelf - perhaps one which includes every hero and villain from Nightwing to Harley Quinn - then this is a pretty good choice. Lee's artwork is bold and full of motion, while Loeb's script does an admirable job of providing a handy primer on the state of Gotham City as it was in 2004, even if it's not quite the dashing mystery thriller he's shooting for.

Monday Movie: In the Mood for Love

Until this point best known for frenetic, hand-held, too-cool-for-school visuals, director Wong Kar-Wai and cinematographer Christopher Doyle (before their infamous falling out) suddenly adopted a more measured style for their atmospheric period piece, In the Mood for Love.

With languid, perfectly-framed camerawork set to a gentle, bittersweet score, Wong tells the everyday story of two neighbours brought together when they discover that their spouses are having an affair. As their hesitant friendship blossoms, their feelings are kept in check by fears of gossip and a determination not to become adulterers themselves.

Probably one of the most intense love stories you'll find about two people who never actually make any moves towards one another.

I haven't had much of a chance to think about Sky Spiders, I'm afraid. I've got this idea for a game that I alluded to, which involves doing something a little different. But while the game would still be rather small, it'd be larger than anything I've done before, and I'm reluctant to charge in blindly.

I'm trying to come up with a smaller idea to test things with, but looking through my notes all I can find are ideas that are probably larger than the one I want to do in the end. I think I may just need to come up with something new, although it seems a shame to leave my large pile of unused ideas untouched.

Anyway, that's what I was doing instead of focusing on Sky Spiders. Sorry.

Robot Stomach Photo

Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
Image source

In a display of dexterity that's quite admirable for her age, Spirit has photographed her underside with her miscroscopic imager instrument. It's not something that this particular camera was ever intended for, so the resulting image is out of focus, but you can still see the rover's wheels embedded deep in the soil.

As well as helping the rover team to understand the situation, this image may also help them discern whether any of the ground beneath the rover is potentially hard or sharp enough to do her an injury.

The angle of the picture accurately depicts the angle at which Spirit is currently resting. The distance between Spirit's wheel tracks is about one metre.

Yay Samus

Nintendo have announced a new Metroid game that looks very interesting. I could see this going either way really. On the one hand, I'm kind of fed up with purists complaining every time someone tries to inject new ideas into the franchise - we've already seen Samus exploring desolate alien ruins plenty of times, and if maybe now we get to expand on the Metroid universe a bit, I'm all for it.

But on the other hand, part of the reason that Samus' world is so compelling (at least to me) is because her story is usually told mostly through careful implication. Even the dialogue-heavy Metroid Fusion had her alone on a space station with just a computer for company. If Metroid: Other M turns out to be a full-on cinematic sci-fi epic, it'll be in danger of losing its chief appeal.

To say nothing of the more obvious concerns with the team behind DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball having some measure of creative control over gaming's strongest female heroine.

Green to Yellow

I really wanted to vote Green. Following this expenses scandal, there's great potential for parties outside the main three to make gains. And I'm very much left wing and pro-science, so Green seems like a good fit. I bet many people with the same leanings voted Green today without even bothering to check out their policies.

Because when I checked their policies, I found that although they're certainly left wing, they're also rather anti-science - the only non-religious party to oppose embryonic stem cell research, for example, because 'it's not clear where it might lead' - something that's applicable to any scientific research. And then they want 'alternative medicine' available on the NHS and to reduce their regulation.

Although I'm sure their PR machine would try and spin it the other way, I get the real impression that their science policy is generally about a woolly fear of anything that strikes them the wrong way, while blindly embracing pseudo-scientific notions that chime with their ideals, regardless of actual merit. And this is a considerable concern: the European parliament has regulatory powers that can easily disrupt research throughout the continent.

And then there's the simple fact that their environmental policies aren't actually much more far ranging than those of the Lib Dems, the party I reluctantly voted for yet again. Surely there's got to be room for some radical party that's all about stimulating scientific research, promoting social justice and protecting the environment?

Chrono Tone

So I finished Chrono Trigger DS a few days back. I'm happy to say that I still find it a very charming game, with characters that are memorable and compelling, and plenty of moments that made me chuckle and blubber.

I also noticed, perhaps for the first time, that the gameplay is very nicely balanced: there's enough slaying of monsters to make it feel like your party of heroes are saving the world, but you actually spend a very significant portion of the game just exploring, talking to people, and uncovering hidden bits of apocalyptic portent throughout history. Which is fine by me, because I've often felt that most Japanese RPGs are too much like a great story turned into a grinding ordeal by random battles, and Chrono Trigger avoids that completely.

It's difficult for me to distil exactly why Chrono Trigger is such a favourite of mine, though. I think it's mostly just a combination of things that all gel with my personal preferences - with its alternate reality time periods with steampunk technology and magic and dinosaurs and implacable alien monsters, not forgetting everything I mentioned last time.

But I also think a big part of it is the game's upbeat, positive tone. And I don't mean a saccharine 'everything is great' smile-fest, I mean a game where you see the end of three civilisations, war, genocide, death and personal tragedy - and yet our heroes always look at it all and decide to fight to make things better. The worse things get, the more determined they are to put things right. And that, to my mind, is just the way to make a heroic epic that's not leaden or pretentious, but bright, affecting and... you know, likeable.