“You mean this isn’t real?”
I suppose it’s because I know a little about technology, but I tend to get quickly annoyed by “sucked into the computer / Internet” stories. To start with, there’s no “there” to be sucked into, mainly – it’s all numbers, words, and pictures constantly copied from A to B and back; and there’s no technology on the horizon that can copy & paste your consciousness like an MS Word file. Moving the story ahead several technology levels helps a bit, as does tossing in blatant magic (if a character is sucked into a painting, no author ever tries to convince us that it’s a glitch in the painting). Still, to simulate *everything* about a world, one needs information storage, processing, and display greater than the sum of the information to be simulated. If you plan to build an virtual planet with a convincing ecosystem and 6 billion people, that can be a heck of a challenge.
Ironically, one of the movies that did the best jobs of this was actually Tron. The hero was sucked into the computer by a device specifically designed to suck physical objects into computers – there was no “I put my cell phone on my low-bandwidth acoustic modem and I suddenly ended up here!” crud. And the simulation he arrived in was clearly crude and basic – there was no pretense of complete realism. Maybe the plot and characters didn’t hold up, but at least there was some underlying logic.
On the other hand, a compelling plot and interesting characters can easily make up for technological BS. The world of the Matrix movies is extremely technologically suspect, but at least during the first movie, we didn’t mind. Just be aware that if you have an “in the computer” story you have to tell, make sure something’s distracting us from the technology, please?
Tonight’s ST:Enterprise
After seeing the first few episodes of the season, I began to feel quite good about where the third season was going…
Spoiler and ranting protection activated
Yes, Adelphia Salem carries BBC America
BBC1 announced yesterday that they are devolping a new series of “Doctor Who”, possibly to appear in 2005.
The series is to be written by Russell T. Davies, creator of the original British “Queer As Folk” series, an “absolute Doctor Who fanatic”. Despite the worried reactions of a few, a spokesperson for the Beeb did not expect a gay Doctor.
Possible candidates for the title role include Richard E Grant, who is appearing in a BBC internet version of Doctor Who; Paul McGann, who starred in the 1996 Fox version; and Alan Davies, who has been linked to the role in the past.
Who Quizzes
According to Doctor Who quizzes posted by snidegrrl and rattrap, I am the “Patrick Troughton” incarnation of the Doctor, and I have a secret crush on his companion “Zoe Herriot.”
Kind of amusing, since I’ve never seen an episode with Zoe (not counting the “Five Doctors” reunion), and little more of the Second Doctor. I think I saw half of “The War Games”, and the “Three Doctors” and “Five Doctors” reunions he was in.
But yeah, Zoe did have good taste in clothes 🙂
Days of Labor
Quite a long weekend. A pretty good one in a lot of ways, but long nevertheless.
Thursday, raininva left for DragonCon to do some contracting for WizKids. Thursday night, after my afternoon nap, I yanked half of my office out into the living room for sorting and re-arrangement. I ended up with a huge plastic storage tub full of gaming stuff that I don’t want to get rid of, but I don’t have room for in the office. That went to the storage along with another tub of loose items; several empty boxes that were just wasting cubic went to the trash, along with two bags full of stuff that just wasn’t doing anyone any good.
Plot a course, Mr. Arex
Today was video day… finally watched the Miyazaki DVD raininva purchased for me, “Spirited Away” – very good, much superior to “Princess Mononoke” in my opinion. Not sure if I like it better than “My Neighbor Totoro” or “Kiki’s Delivery Service”. but it was a good way to spend two hours.
Also, I acquired all the episodes of the Star Trek animated series, so I was treating myself to some good mid-seventies flashbacks. That show was definitely ahead of its time – weak animation and writing compared to much modern anime, but compared to the Saturday morning cartoons it was aired against, it was solid stuff. Besides, animation can do much wilder aliens than all the latex forehead bumps in Hollywood.
I even got some dishes and laundry done, so I’m all productive and stuff today.
You too can be a lesbian wiccan who once dated Scott Evil.
One of Willow’s outfits (size M) is up for bids on eBay. Really!
Willow Outfit, eBay #3327826135
Pic & description, if it’s gone already
1,000 points to Ryan Stiles for the whole “tall” thing
I’m typing up a pamphlet on selling strategies for work, and I hit this passage:
Client: How soon can you get us the product? Seller: What time schedule would be suit your needs?
… and I’m immediately thinking, “Look, it’s the Question Game!”
Client: Are you sure you understand my needs? Seller: Have I given you reason to think I don’t? Client: Can’t you see I’m a little uncomfortable with this purchase? Seller: How can I alleviate your discomfort? Client: Can I have a cookie? Seller: What kind of cookie would you like?
… and so on, and so on.
Someone told me yesterday about a website I needed to check out. Now, if I can only remember which site, or even who it was.
Battle Fury
Every time I see a hostage situation in the movies, the angry, violent part of me wishes I was watching the Klingon version, where the good guys sorrowfully declare the hostages martyrs, sing songs of their brave sacrifice, and blow up the building.
One of the worst times was actually during a Star Trek episode, where some culture had gotten hold of a space probe of ours, reverse-engineered the matter-antimatter technology (wrongly), and wrecked their planet. They then had the gall to blame us, and kill off a hostage to show that despite their idiocy, they still had really big sex organs. And to make it worse, our captain starts feeling guilty about the whole thing!
On the other tentacle, the Klingon version:
Terrorist: “Despite the fact that you were agreeing to our demands, we’ve killed one of the hostages. I bet you regret your mistake now, huh?”
Klingon captain: “I sure do. Good-bye, honorable landing party.”
Klingon landing party: “Bye! You’ll find some death song ideas in our personal logs – we’ve been working on them just in case!”
Terrorist: “What? Hey! Wait! Wait a minute!”
The landing party’s communicators, being really sturdy, register the first half-second of incoming photon torpedo fire.
Klingon captain: “Too bad. Let’s go find a planet with some real warriors!”
Now, I want to make it clear that I’m not suggesting this as a solution to any real-world situation. Whatever the flaws in the idea, though, I bet it would cut down on hostage crises.
Declaring a vent order
Just read an article yubbie posted elsewhere on the impending return of Battlestar Galactica… it’s a somewhat annoying article, full of smug talk like “we’re taking the opera out of space opera”, and “our spaceships won’t go woosh”, and “we’ll never do a time-travel story”, and “no bumpy-headed aliens”.
It makes me want to grab them by the throat and say, “Look – you morons!” Since the days when our hide-clad ancestors squatted around a fire and told stories of the gods to avoid thinking about how cold and hungry they were, storytelling has only needed two elements: engaging characters, and a stong plot (in fact, if you’ve done one of those elements extremely well, you can often skimp on the other).
If you’ve got those elements, you can do anything else you want. Technobabble? Fine, the fen will compose dictionaries for their own amusement. Bumpy-headed aliens? Makes it easier to tell ’em apart. Time travel? I’ll just point out that time travel is at the core of much of the favorite science-fiction and fantasy of the last 40 years.
Stop telling us what you won’t do, and show us some damn good writing. Do that, and all else will be forgiven.
While I’m in the mood to rant… yesterday, I was once again informed by a younger fan how lame classic Star Trek was, which is something I’m so sick of hearing. Kid, maybe the show isn’t to your taste, which is your right as a language-using primate. But I challenge you to find me a better science-fiction show with a continuing set of characters on late 1960’s American network television. Can’t think of one? Fine, then don’t blame a Ford Model T because it couldn’t break 100 miles per hour and didn’t have a CD player.
Aaaaahhhhh… that felt good.
