The view from Mars

Sometimes, all of the speculative fiction about the universe can't hold a candle to the real thing, such as these images from the latest unmanned mission to Mars. 

Doctor Who vs. Star Trek in a tag-team battle to the death

Er, maybe not, but snarky SF site io9 has an interesting survey of the differing occupations of Who and Trek fans. What the rather non-scientific study (though scientific enough that if it had some kind of health benefit, it would be heralded by the major media as "important new findings" that would have, say, everyone eating jelly at each meal each day) found is that fans of both shows follow fairly similar paths -- both in dreams and realities. I'm not surprised by that, no matter the posturing from the different fan bases, the shows attract the same kind of fans. (Personally, I see no reason to separate them, then again I've watched Doctor Who since 1980 -- actually earlier, as a local TV station broadcast it after school for a few months around 1978 -- and Trek literally from the time I was born, as my parents and older siblings were avid watchers, even in the show's death knell in 1969).

What's really great is the jolly time line of the two shows that's about half-way down the page. While Trek gets standard icons, each Doctor gets an adorable avatar to represent his era -- the BBC could market those as some kind of "Baby Docs..." er wait, maybe we should rethink that name.

One against the modern-day Philistines

Over his career, James Morrow has shown little patience with fanaticism, especially of the religious order. His latest novel, The Philosopher's Apprentice, doesn't spare the rod for anyone -- religious extremists, scheming capitalists or followers of science. And at the center of the book is someone who seems to be the most useless of all modern-day academics: the philosophy major.

The book follows Mason Ambrose, who -- while at a dead-end in his academic career -- takes a job as a tutor on an isolated island in the Florida Keys. He finds that his charge, a youngster named Londa, has no sense of morality at all. It is his job to fill in that empty void in her life. The why of this quickly becomes clear -- Londa has been grown by mother Edwina, a rich and brilliant scientist. And Londa has two sisters, grown to different ages, so the dying Edwina can experience motherhood at different ages before she passes away.

And that's just the opening salvo here... Morrow goes on to follow Londa's adult career. While Ambrose succeeded in bringing Londa closer to humanity, she undertakes her moral explorations with the single-minded dedication of a scientist. In the end, she decides to battle against the "Philistines" and attempts to affect a change on them via force. That all of this happens aboard a recreated Titanic packed to the gills with rich industrialists, politicians and moral guardians (whose leaders had used the technology to create Londa and her sisters to unleash a plague of creatures born from aborted fetuses on their "parents"). 

Though it's fairly clear where Morrow' sympathies lie here, he -- like all good satirists -- pokes and prods at all sides of the issues here, from the rather self-absorbed narrator to the decidedly amoral actions of both Edwina/Londa and the Christian crusaders allied against them. And in the end, it is the philosopher, after endless lessons, who needs to make a real-life "impossible" decision. It's an impressive work -- and another sign that Morrow is one of the best authors of any genre writing these days.

At his best, Thomas Ligotti casts a spell over the reader akin to a waking nightmare. The actions in his stories are often beyond any experience that we could know in our everyday life, but the relentlessness and detail of the narration draw us in nonetheless. His worldview is uniformly bleak and most of his writing has been done for obscure journals or in limited-edition volumes, but his legend has grown to the point where Ligotti is an oft-cited (if perhaps not as often read) figure in weird fiction.

The Nightmare Factory takes his writing to a new medium. In it, four of Ligott's short stories are reinterpreted by teams of comic book authors/illustrators. It ends up being a mixed bag. Ligotti's literary spell can easily be broken if the reader is distracted, and the art within the stories at times does this. This hurts the most in the opening "Last Feast of Harlequin." The story is certainly Ligotti's most famous work, one where he takes Lovecraftian expectations and merges them with a nihilistic vision that even the misanthropic Lovecraft would have found to be a bit harsh. Yet recreating it in a visual medium (albeit with excellent Colleen Doran art) robs the story of much of its sense of growing dread.

Ted McKeever, whose ragged art style matches Ligotti's off-kilter visions, does better with "Dr. Locrian's Asylum," driving home the story's madness with an equally mad art style. The other two stories, "Dream of a Mannikin" and "Teatro Grottesco" fall in between these, with expected, in-the-middle results. The Nightmare Factory is a nice experiment, and hopefully brings new readers to this singular author, but really the best way to experience Thomas Ligotti is on the page -- preferably alone, late at night, perhaps with the windows shut against the cold and rain. 

Moffat is in!

It's not really surprising news, considering how closely associated he's been with the revival of Doctor Who, but the news that Steven Moffat will take over as the show's "showrunner" for the show's fifth season in 2010 is still great to hear. Moffat is both a phenomenal writer (not just for Doctor Who, but also other British shows) and a lifelong fan of the program. And going by his episodes for the show -- the original Captain Jack two-parter, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink -- (and his BBC miniseries, Jekyll), the show may be headed for a darker place.

It's also good that Russell T. Davies is getting out before the show claims another burned-out producer. If there's one word I would use for the fourth season of the show, it would be tired. It all feels a bit exhausted, and considering Davies has spent at least the last five years breathing Doctor Who almost every moment of the day that shouldn't be a surprise. It's happened before on the show. John Nathan Turner led a renaissance for the show at the end of Tom Baker's era and into the rather jolly Peter Davison years. The problem is that he then stayed, and stayed (there are stories that the BBC wouldn't let him leave the show, so this may not be all of his own making). The show's budget got squashed, the number of episodes were cut and the program limped along in the end, fueled mainly by Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. It seems that they've learned from past mistakes (that Doctor Who is one of the most popular BBC programs doesn't hurt when it comes to leverage) and want to keep the show fresh and successful.

Just a note on my music project. I don't want it to seem like that all I listen to is 1970s hard rock, but the latest major block of music I'm dealing with is Alice Cooper. Alice and the boys were a better group than often given credit for, more glam than metal, and they put a jolly series of albums in the middle 1970s, even if the pot is so soaked into the recordings that you can practically smell it through the computer. Upcoming acts include Alison Krauss and British crust legends Amebix. Oddly enough, there's no Allman Brothers. I may have to make a trip to the record store to rectify that...

Listening to "A"

Inspired in part by Noel Murray's "popless" columns in the A.V. Club, and a personal desire to trim my own digital music collection, I've started the long process of going through my music, artist by artist, album by album, song by song. Now, I'm not going to listen to everything -- I know I want to keep the Beatles or Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan (just a few "B"s right there, at least, in the way iTunes organizes things) -- because that would take 122 days of continuous listening to get to the end (providing I don't add anything new). As I actually have work right now, that probably isn't going to work. So it's more a matter of listening to the unfamiliar and deciding if it should stay or if it should go (hmm, that could be a song title).

So far, I'm up to Ae -- which, as you rockers would know, means Aerosmith. It's interesting how musical taste can work in odd ways. Yesterday, I carefully pruned the AC/DC lists, cutting out most of the post-Back in Black music, but only deleting duplicates when it came to the Bon Scott era from the 1970s. Now listening to Aerosmith, who ply a similar style of blues-based hard rock who hit their peak in the 1970s, I am mainly impatient when listening to the non-radio hits. Some of this could be personal -- AC/DC was one of my first rock 'n' roll loves, all the way back to the night in the summer of 1980 when I first switched the dial to the rock station (KQRS, which pretty much plays the same music -- I mean, literally the same music -- today). I got Back in Black for Christmas that year and listened to it constantly (Mom and Dad -- sorry!)

On the other hand, Aerosmith was moribund in the early 1980s, sunk in the depths of their various drug addictions. Permanent Vacation was still seven years away, with a variety of solo projects and badly thought-out albums (including a pair of Spinal-Tap worthy moments: one where all of the writing was backwards; and one featuring  Stonehenge) still to come before their renewal. When I did get a chance to hear their older albums (I had an eight-track of Get Your Wings) I wasn't particularly impressed.

But I don't think it's just my personal preference. For all the swagger, Aerosmith doesn't have the pure free rolling spirit of the original AC/DC, where Bon Scott shared his excesses with child-like glee. Too often, ballads and serious tunes got in the way of Steve Tyler, Joe Perry and the rest. And Perry, while a good hard rock guitarist, can't hold a candle to the raw boogie of Angus Young. In comparison (and since I'm trimming, this is all about comparisons) the Australians completely kick their American brethren's asses.

Judge does theater criticism

The quixotic quest by Minnesota bar owners and patrons to get around "no smoking" prohibitions by presenting "improvisational" theater performances where all of the patrons are actors, who just happen to smoke (smoking during a theatrical performance is allowable under the law) has been quashed by a Minnesota judge. 

As the evenings had no script or attempt to tell a story, they really didn't fall on the side of a performance and the smokers will have to return to their now-familiar post outside, huddled against the, er, rather nice spring air. 

At their present course, I don't see how they could win, unless the actually go the extra step and present some kind of show. After all, Minnesota is lousy with actors, directors and writers, including tons with improvisational experience. The cost of a couple hours of a lawyer could probably buy an actor's services for several weeks (more if you toss in free drinks). They, in turn, could guide the evening. Maybe there's been a murder in the bar and someone's the killer. Maybe the band hasn't shown up. Maybe they've run out of rum. The possibilities are endless -- and maybe even entertaining.

Ah, the sucky Doctor Who episode at last

You know I had high hopes for Doctor Who and Agatha Christie, but instead I got giant space wasps and a story that couldn't decide its tone (serious?, mysterious? parody of drawing room mysteries from the 1920s? What?) and containing a message basically the same as the Charles Dickens' show from season 1. Well, Steven Moffat's space library show looks promising at least...

More Doctor Who stuff:

The Battle for the knitted Ood goes on...

The A.V. Club interviewed Freema Agyeman this week.

And this bit appeared in Neil Gaiman's blog this morning: 

I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush...

"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?"

This Trend Has Gone Too Far

...and I'm back. I could say that I'm doing a secret project for the government, but really I'm just grading papers for tests, and it's all governed by non-disclosure agreements, so I can't say much else. Still, a brief pause in it all, so hopefully I can get a bit caught up over the next week.

Pearls Before Swine puts the whole blogging thing into perspective.

As the American TV season grinds to a halt, shows are starting to wrap up -- 30 Rock ended on a high note, while Lost seems to be heading for some big mojo by the end. Battlestar Galatica is just getting warmed up on its last season, though I have to admit the show isn't quite the destination for me as it was before. I think it'll find its way again -- some of this has to do with the whole Starbuck thing, which I think is spiraling out of control for a reason, as opposed to the writers having no idea what to do.

Doctor Who keeps rolling along. Nothing this season has been as all-out awful as last year's Daleks in New York monstrosity, but nothing up to "Blink" or "Girl in the Fireplace" standards. On the other hand, we do get Agatha Christie soon (this week for those in Britain, a bit later for the U.S.) followed by a new Steven Moffat (who wrote both of the aforementioned good episodes) two-parter followed by  some massive three or four part series finale.. and then a rest. I think the show needs a bit of a rest, actually. Oh, the scripts are still sharp and the actors fun and all that, but I think too much exposure hurts even the best of programs.