Robert A. Heinlein taking a huge dump on sci-fi

The other day I read a book called "Lullaby" in which (among other interesting developments) a rich lady uses her fortune to buy a publishing company so she can destroy all copies of a book containing a poem that when read to someone kills them.  If such a book existed and I had a choice to either destroy all copies of it and save countless lives, or all copies of the relatively harmless  Robert A Heinlein's Number of the Beast; well I would probably have to flip a coin.

Honestly when I picked up this book I was expecting something really special, all the Heinlein books I had read so far had been really good.  More specifically I had read the mind bending Stranger in a Strange Land, the exceptionally well written, creative and fleshed out The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and the short but sweet slightly fascist sci-fi action classic Starship Troopers.  All of these books are science fiction classics and I cannot recommend them enough. 
However I think I would rather recommend a battery acid colonic than recommend reading Number of the Beast, it is such a piece of worthless tripe that it nearly destroyed all the respect that I had accumulated for Heinlein. What is so wrong with this book? You may ask.  I'm about to tell you what, but there is so much to hate that I am really having a hard time finding a starting point.


I guess I should start at the beginning.  At first the writing style seemed fast paced and pulpy but it was interesting, however that interest runs out when you realize that despite the tone of the novel starting out quick the thing is 500+ pages long and the plot does not in any way keep up with the pace set by the writing style.  Of course some plot points go by quickly, within the first two pages 2 of the main characters Zebadiah (ugh) and Deety decide to get married, of course this is absurd and completely unbelievable because they are complete strangers and have just met.  I was willing to suspend my disbelief for a bit, thinking that this being Heinlein sexual mores in his sci-fi worlds are generally a little bit wonky.  This didn't turn out to be the case, it really turns out that he just decided that he needed to have a married couple as the protagonists so why not just have two complete strangers meet and decide to tie the knot within the first 2 pages of the book.  Of course the whirl wind romance in the first 2 pages of the book could have probably been spaced out and made a little bit more believable if Heinlein had removed the 50% of the book that is made up by the characters doing math out loud, and programming their ships' computer.   

So complete absurdity and unbelievability aside he goes on to introduce us to the other 2 main characters, Deety's father Dr. Jake Burroughs, who is annoyingly referred to as "Pop" through most of the book, and Debutant and all-around rich bitch Hilda. Who also inexplicably decide to get married right after the first couple chapters, however at least they have some back story to kind of support this.

Now I have gotten to the meat and potatoes of what is completely wrong with this stinking turd of a book.  Some complete incredulously unbelievable plot stuff aside the plot is at least interesting: Dr. Burroughs has created a crazy space/time machine that can take you into any one of six to the sixth to the sixth power number of parallel universes, aliens want to destroy the technology, the four protagonists spend the majority of the book running from said aliens and exploring.  This would be bearable and perhaps even enjoyable to read if Heinlein had not made all four of his main characters into "Mary Sues"

According to the "Mary Sue" wikipedia page:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".
Although the traits of a "Mary Sue" are not necessarily gender-specific, the term itself is used exclusively for females. The term must be modified to refer to male characters; they are often dubbed "Gary Stu", "Larry Stu", "Marty Stu", or similar names. While the label "Mary Sue" itself originates from a parody of this type of character, most characters labeled "Mary Sues" by readers are not intended by authors as such.

While the above definition is generally applied to fanfiction, I think it best describes the characters in this book.  They are all geniuses, Zeb and the Dr. Burroughs both are fencing masters and incredibly wealthy while being math geniuses, Deety is a martial arts master and incredibly wealthy, a math genius and of course super hot to boot.  While Hilda is a little bit less of a genius but still a genius, a little bit less wealthy than the rest of them but still sickeningly wealthy and super hot to boot. Pretty much all 4 characters are near-perfect copies of each other, and all 4 characters talk in the same way and have the same political ideologies which perfectly coincide with Heinlein's idealistic libertarian viewpoints (WHAT A SHOCK). Ugh, its pissing me off even writing about it.  The only likable character in the book is 'Gay Deceiver' the space ship, and the only reason it is believable is because it is a computer guided rocket-car thing that is supposed to be two dimensional and have no personality.

The dialogue from each of the characters is usually spent spouting out random math equations used for their flight calculations and needless techno jargon. However when they are interacting with each other it usually wavers from sickeningly sweet lovey-dovey bullshit, to righteous indignation. Also there are speeches featuring ridiculous empty headed machismo from the males, overly feminine empty headed prattle from both females, and the occasional reference to the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom novels.

That brings me to another problem, 3 of the main characters are named in Homage to E.R.B. and his Barsoom Novels, The characters literally spend page upon page talking about how great said novels are. After the first few times I had to read about how totally freaking awesome John Carter of Mars and all his crazy-ass adventures are I decided Heinlein would have been better off just writing a fanfic. Either that or just go give the guy a literal reach-around as opposed to a literary one.

Ugh I am going to just wrap this up with a few man bullet points because I could literally type on how much I hated this piece of shit all day.

1. The characters spend page upon page reciting math equations out loud, maybe to make it seem more like "hard" science fiction.
2. The characters spend page upon page programming the computer on board Gay Deciever, maybe to make it seem more like "hard" science fiction
3. The story is either moving at a lighting quick pace or a hideously slow crawl bogged down in the above mentioned math recitation and computer programming 
4. THE DIALOGUE MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE
5. Libertarian fantasy bullshit: For example a multi-page explanation on how Deety and "Pop" cheat the government out of their taxes and then somehow secretly insert money into programs that are socially responsible like fire departments etc. Or stupid story about how Zeb got a doctorate just to make a statement on how doctorates are completely worthless compared to being just naturally awesome
6. Poorly crafted story elements. i.e. their spaceship is small but somehow they can fit enough supplies into it to last them months just by really trying hard at packing. Also any random item that they need whatsoever just happens to be packed in some back crate in the ship and not mentioned until they need it. 

Now do yourself a favor, if you see a copy of this book, immediately go buy a copy of The Forever War and read it instead. Do not under any circumstances touch this radioactive piece of syphilitic monkey crap.

Inception

I just got back from seeing Christopher Nolan's Inception.  I have to say that this movie blew my mind right out of the back of my skull. I'm sure that I could write a movie that involved bending a city block in half, gunfights, car chases, running gunfights on skis, and a zero gravity fistfight, however there is no way that I could possibly make it such an excellent and compelling story line.  The cast does an incredible job in the film as well, and Leonardo DiCaprio has a sharp eye for scripts to get in on this right on the tail of Shutter Island. I loved literally everything about this movie from the music, the storyline, the acting and the direction. While this movie is kind of a sci-fi psychological thriller, it has loads of solid action scenes and is incredibly intense. I wholeheartedly recommend this film to everyone.

Samurai Saturday

For those of you who enjoy stories about the samurai and feudal Japan I may have a couple suggestions. 

Last night I watched the film "Goyokin" knowing little to no background on it.  The film was very good; it takes place towards the end of the samurai era long after the battle of Sekigahara and establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate and centers on Magobei Wakizaka. Magobei is a ronin who left the service of his lord after the chief retainer who also happens to be his brother in law perpetrated a massacre to cover up the theft of gold from a sunken ship.  The massacre is attributed to being the work of evil crow spirits and Magobei  agrees to keep silent about it if the chief retainer never repeats his actions.  After 3 years of wandering and on the brink of selling his sword and renouncing the Way of the Samurai, he is attacked by former comrades leading him to believe that the chief retainer plans to go back on his word and commit a similar atrocity.  The director of the film is Hideo Gosha, who according to wikipedia is nearly as influential in the "chambara" or "sword-fighting" film genre as Kurosawa, and watching this film I can definitely see why.  Of course this isn't exactly "Yojimbo" or "The Seven Samurai"  but in terms of storytelling this film blows pulp samurai films out of the water, while still having enough action to hold the interest of people who may be fans of stylistic elements of "exploitation" samurai films.



 My second suggestion to fans of samurai lore is the book Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, this is a very famous book however if you are only familiar with it by reputation or if you enjoyed the book "Shogun" I would highly recommend that you pick this book up.  The book is a fictionalized account of a decade in the life of Miyamoto Musashi, and while it has action and combat it is more about character developent. The book follows Musashi from his humble beginnings as a young tough wounded in the battle of Sekigahara, he eventually becomes an outlaw, begins to try to seek the true "Way" and eventually masters himself and finds peace. Yoshikawa is a master storyteller he creates a large cast of characters who are all interconnected. He also tends to neglect one character or the other for a couple hundred pages, and just as you are starting to think "hey what happened to so-and-so?" whatever character you are wondering about makes a seamless reappearance.  Be forewarned however this book is obscenely long it usually takes me 1 to 2 nights to finish a book, this one took me close to 10.  The copy that I rented had enormous pages and was still over 800 pages in length, I can only imagine a paperback copy having over 1000.  In all I found the book to be deeply satisfying if a little lengthy and I highly recommend it to fans of "Shogun" or even Dumas' "The 3 Musketeers."

An Interesting and Moody/Creepy Web Series

I was perusing the forums over at www.somethingawful.com when I came across a post about an online web series posted via youtube called Marble Hornets.  I have only watched the first 6 episodes so far which are anywhere from 1 to 3.5 minutes long and I am impressed, so far it has been very suspenseful and creepy in a david lynch-y kind of way.  I think that it may be a forum goon project because it features "slenderman" which was a bit of an internet meme that started out in the "create paranormal images" thread on somethingawful.com. Here he is in all his creepy uncanny glory:

This weird dude has gotten pretty popular on the internet and has been shopped into many a creepy black and white image to give people chills. 

So head on over to youtube and check out here is the intro and the first clip just to give you a little taste:





You can check out the original thread here if you want more info on the project or if you want an index of all the episodes: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3207172

My Favorite Criminal or My Favorite Artist

The reason I think this post is important is because it is about art. Yes that's right art. I will be the first to admit that Art is boring as hell, well at least the majority of it is. But add crime, scandal, urban culture, scathing social commentary, and a little bit of wicked humor and Art becomes more than just Art. It can become a social movement. 

"Millennials" as my generation has been termed by some have really not had a good counterculture movement. Nothing that holds a candle to the sexual revolution or so called "hippy culture" that encompassed the anti-war movement, radical leftist movements, and the drug subculture.  After another decade and a half or so Punk culture began to develop and with it hardcore culture, skinhead culture (not all of these are positive nessecarily) straightedge etc.

Okay bear with me at this point and don't spout any of that "punks not dead" bullshit at me because it is.  What cool subculture is still out there screwing with the establishment? We "Millenials" don't have much but we do have "Street Art" (Disclaimer here: Like all countercultures there is no definite genesis point. I am not an expert on this subject, just a fan. Street Art has been around for a long time but it seems to be becoming more popular or at least gaining more publicity and more mainstream acceptability).

Street Art is crazy, it turns the world onto its head. When you as the consumer pirate an album, you get the music for free and you break the law, you are stealing from the artist.  When you see a street art piece, its free, but the artist more often than not is the one that broke the law.  They are breaking the law to bring art to you, so you can look at it for free. Its altruistic crime and it kinda makes my head hurt to think about it.  

Of course I can't really get involved in street art because I have no talent but I still want to support the hell out of these guys.  My favorite street artist goes by the alias "Banksy"  

You can read about Banksy here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy or you can let me paraphrase it for you.

Banksy may be named Robert or Robin Banks, or he may be named Robin Gunningham.  The mystery of the identity is part of what makes the dude so interesting to me.  According to his agent they have never even met face to face. 

Banksy started out doing freehand graffiti, but long story short it took too long so he switched to stencils and a legend was born.  This guy isn't doing graffiti for gang related reasons, he does it to make statements about society, some of his statements are simple, some are obscure, and some are just completely ridiculous.

 
This next picture is particularly cool because it was done in the Gaza strip where israel has erected a massive wall to isolate Arab citizens.

Here is one of his sculptures that he left in the street. I think it was given to a museum after it was removed by the authorities:

This though is one of my favorites: the picture will not really do much for you so let me provide some backstory via Wikipedia:

In August/September 2006, Banksy replaced up to 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD, Paris, in 48 different UK record stores with his own cover art and remixes by Danger Mouse. Music tracks were given titles such as "Why am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?". Several copies of the CD were purchased by the public before stores were able to remove them, some going on to be sold for as much as £750 on online auction websites such as eBay. The cover art depicted Paris Hilton digitally altered to appear topless. Other pictures feature her with a dog's head replacing her own, and one of her stepping out of a luxury car, edited to include a group of homeless people, which included the caption "90% of success is just showing up"  -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy 

 Here are a couple more of my favorites:

A piece in Bethlehem:

The next few pieces were smuggled into various art museums (the Tate Britain Gallery, The British Museum The American Museum of Natural History and last but not least the f-ing Louvre. Yes thats right the place where they store the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, etc.) and then installed covertly by Banksy:

 

I hope that I might have got you interested enough in street art and Banksy to watch this movie when it comes out. I hope to see it as soon as it gets within a 3 hour drive of my house. 
This film is about Banksy is going to be capital "A" Amazing. Its called Exit Through the Gift Shop, Go see it. 

Iron Man 2

So I went into the theatre a little wary when Iron Man 2 debuted.  Somethingawful.com had given it a review that was less than flattering calling it an hour and a half long teaser for the Avengers and while there is a fair amount of hints at the future tie-in I have to say that the film itself was actually really enjoyable. 

While the movie itself was not as good as the first film in my opinion it still had a lot of good things going for it, for example Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell, and Robert Downey Jr. all give good performances. Don Cheadle does a solid job as well however I have to say that I miss Terence Howard in the role as War Machine.

There are some flaws of course, The movie really emphasizes the whole invincible part of The Invincible Iron Man  as Iron Man never really seems to be in much danger, in fact I think maybe 1 person gets seriously hurt in the entire movie, the rest of it is just Iron Man and War Machine shrugging off bullets and having a jolly old time kicking ass. The Monaco raceway scene is definitely one not to be missed but in all I felt like the action took a back seat.

This movie is definitely worth a watch, however if you really want to see some superheroes messing up thugs I would still go see Kick-Ass before it is too late.   

Kick-Ass? It sure does.

You have probably seen the trailer for Kick-Ass, and like many people you probably think It looks like an amusing romp, suitable for young teenagers.  Well you would be wrong. Kick Ass is a gratuitously violent film and a very hard R.  Kick Ass is probably one of the most violent and most wickedly funny films to be released this year.  The film is based on the comic of the same name by Mark Millar, the man who brought us the gory badass bullet-fest, Wanted. However unlike Wanted  fans of the comic will be glad to know that while Kick-Ass has been changed a little bit to be more Hollywood-friendly, it is still true to the spirit of the source material.

There has been some controversy with the film because of Chloe Moretz' depiction of Hit-Girl which you can read about below.  The main thing to keep in mind before seeing this movie is that it is named Kick-Ass for God's sake. There is going to be alot of ass kicking involved, and it is for the most part a hard R and very lethal type of asskicking.  

http://www.ugo.com/movies/kick-ass-controversy?cmpid=rss-movies-imdb

I already mentioned Chloe Moretz, above but I can't praise her role enough in the film.  Hit-Girl may be the most messed up kid ever, and definitely someone I wouldn't want to meet in real life, but Moretz is again wickedly funny in the role, and more importantly she is the penultimate badass. Seriously this 13 year old girl could probably put the entire cast of the Expendables in the hospital, or more likely the morgue.

 This kid is the real star of the show. 

Nicholas Cage was pretty good too, which is high praise for him lately, of course his character is a total weirdo which helps make up for his current lack of acting skills.

In all I highly recommend this film but only if you like violence, superheroes, gunplay, morbid dark humor, as well as Superbad-esque dick jokes and likable dork humor. 

John Woo knocks (half of) it out of the park.

John Woo has shown us that he can still direct one hell of a film.  

Guan Yu, Taoist god, Buddhist Bodhisattva and greatest badass to ever live makes an appearance in the film.

Last night I watched Red Cliff part 1: Destiny Lies in the Wind.  This is the international release version of the film as opposed to the U.S. version which a combination of parts 1 and 2 and is heavily pared down.  First of all this movie is absolutely gorgeous, all the set pieces and artifacts are meticulously crafted while the CGI is top of the line.  Of course the story is what I really got into it for.  Red Cliff: is the story of the battle at Red Cliff (Chi Bi) a turning point in the fall of the Han dynasty, all the historical characters are present. First you have Zhuge Liang, a strategist only overshadowed by Sun Tzu himself, and his counterpart from the south Zhou Yu who is played masterfully by Tony Leung.  If you know anything about this period in Chinese history you will be incredibly pleased by this film, and even if you do not, this film and the second promise to be the most epic films since the lord of the rings.  Of course the first part of the film is mainly character building with a couple battles, but it is beautiful and very well written. I can't wait to get my hands on part 2.  

 

The best fiction I have read in years. (contains profanity)

Here is the plot synopsis of a book that I just recently read.  Now you know that I try to limit the F bombs in my blog out of respect for folks that may be offended by language but let me say right now that the only way I can describe this book is as a complete and utter mindfuck. 

 

What the hell is that thing? A faceheartvagina?

Rant takes the form of a (fictional) oral history of Buster "Rant" Casey, in which an assortment of friends, enemies, admirers, detractors, and relations have their say on this evil character, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.

Buster Casey was every small kid born in a small town, searching for real thrills in a world of video games and action/adventure movies. The high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his hometown of Middleton for the big city and becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing, where on designated nights, the participants recognize each other by dressing their cars with tin-can tails, "Just Married" toothpaste graffiti, and other refuse, then look for designated markings in order to stalk and crash into each other. It's in this violent, late-night hunting game that Casey meets three friends. And after his spectacular death, these friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short life. Their collected anecdotes explore the charges that his saliva infected hundreds and caused a silent, urban plague of rabies....

First of all this plot synopsis completely leaves out a huge part of the story, the part of the story that should see Chuck Palahniuk put on trial for raping my brain.  Of course I really don't want to give away too much of the story but lets just say that it involves time travel.  I would say that the story is like a cross between Back to the Future and Memento with a little dystopian Blade Runner shit thrown in.

I was completely blown away by Palahniuk halfway through the book, he is funny, and his narrative is sharp and at times, gut-wrenching.  Rant starts out following a truly weird and sick child, one surely destined to grow up to be a blight upon society as we know it.  Slowly I began to identify with him as he grew up.  Masterfully Palahniuk pulls the strings of his narrative and magically as Rant begins to look more and more appealing the society he lives in begins to look less and less so until the universe seems to have been turned upside down. Rant who we thought to be a villain has turned out to be if not a hero at least a pretty likeable anti-hero.  All that is before time travel even begins to make a major plot appearance to totally blow your goddamn mind!   What else does this book have to offer? Spider venom induced priapism.  Yes you read that right. But Palahiniuk's sick sense of humor aside he and Cormac McCarthy are both going to be battling it out for the title of best contemporary novelist in America.

If you read one book this year make it this book.  Even if you only read one book this decade, read this one.  Then punch yourself in the crotch for being an illiterate Phillistine.

The Dethalbum II by DethKlok

I picked up Dethalbum II at Best Buy the other day, I am a big fan of Metalocalypse and black comedy in general, I am also a big fan of metal so I thought that this album would be a slam dunk.  This album takes a different direction from the first Dethalbum which debuted #21 on the Billboard top 200.  The first Dethalbum was alot more in-your-face with the comedy while Dethalbum 2 seems to be more serious on the surface with some tounge-in-cheek humor that you really need to listen for.  Of course the music is impressive if not a little too synthetic, (on the other hand we are talking about a fake band here) Brendon Small's vocal style seems to be evolving.  While Mr. Small is never going to display the range that many singers can achieve he does differ his vocal delivery a little bit, adding more variety between songs.  The first track on the album entitled "Bloodlines" is by far the best it is the most inventive, has the best leveling, and the best vocals.  It also has a totally kickass music video which I will link at the bottom of the post.  After the first song there are still some bright spots on this album such as "The Cyborg Slayers" "Black Fire Upon Us" "Murmaider II: The Water God" and one of my personal favorites "Laser Cannon Deth Sentence." As a whole the album is a little too much death metal and not enough power metal for my own peronal thrashing tastes, but I definitely do not regret purchasing it.

The Album as far as Death Metal goes is pretty damn good.  If you are a fan of Amon Amarth, Slayer, Unleashed, etc this will probably be right up your alley. However if you are more a fan of the show and not the genre you may want to skip this one, or go for the deluxe edition to get video extras and etc.

Titus Crow, The Clock of Dreams & Spawn of the Winds

I just finished reading Brian Lumley's second Titus Crow novel entitled Titus Crow: The Clock of Dreams and Spawn of the Winds. 

The first half of the book, the story entitled "The Clock of Dreams" continues the trend off this series to become completely fantastical, this time reminding me more of Tolkien than Lovecraft, although it does take place in "Dreamland" a real world dreamed  up by men in Lovecraft's fiction and peopled with fantastical denizens from peaceful villagers to crazy devil people with horns and cloven hooves.  The story follows Crow's sidekick Henri de-Marigny as he attempts to save Crow and his crazy-hot alien girlfriend Tiania from the aforementioned devil people.  Of course this turns into an epic adventure complete with floating cities, giant nightmare machines, and even a vampire blob.  The story really takes of from Lovecrafts' style establishing Lumley's own take on Lovecrafts' creation. 

If the first story reminded me of JRR Tolkien then the second story in the book, "The Spawn of the Winds"  was channeling Robert E. Howard.  Where the Clock of Dreams was as close to high fantasy as you can get, "Spawn" was a swashbuckling romp complete with duels, people getting harpooned, bear cavalry, wolf riders and snow ships.

The story itself brings us back to a character briefly intoduced in "Burrowers" named Hank Siberhutte a big beefy Texan psychic with a score to settle with the "Cthonian Cycle Deities" and one in particular Ithaqua A.K.A. The Thing that Walks on the Winds.  In this story Hank is the main character while Crow and de Marigny are completely absent.  While searching out the Wind-Walker in the arctic Hank is transported along with 4 others including his sister to the frozen world of Borea where he becomes embroiled in a civil war between prime evil Ithaqua and his followers and his wayward half human (and super-fine) daughter and her own tribe. Of course cheesy romance follows along with crazy battles involving polar bears, wolves, spears, magic power etc.

Again Lumleys style is all over the place but he somehow figures out a way to keep it together and create a narrative that is compelling at times, though I do have to complain that the romantic plot between Armandra and Hank is pretty much exactly the same as Tiania and Crow's romantic subplot, and it stuck in my craw a little bit.     

In all I enjoyed the read and those who don't mind their fiction a little pulpy will probably be pretty satisfied with this.