Friday Ephemera
Unforeseen consequences. || My money’s on the little guy. || He made his own. || New neighbours detected || Forming spheres. || Fun with sand, some rubbing. || Electro-pop. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus) || Today’s word is suboptimal. || She’s an educator, you know. || Modernity is a hell of a thing. || See also. || Screams stopping abruptly, a thread. || Reverse your videos. Or pretty much any video. || “Very disturbed people.” || Branding, baby. || Being woke, she is of course enraged. || Eye-catching, yes, but a bugger to dust. || A collection of found paper aeroplanes. (h/t, Things) || Today’s other words are lubricant and pen torch. || A love like no other. || Clouds. || And finally, some behavioural correction.
I can only sadly assume they do know. This is a more depressing state of affairs.
Mission accomplished. The demoralization will continue as planned, comrade.
It was… the looming certainty that something gravity-bending was about to emerge that I particularly enjoyed.
Yes, after the first of the Big Impossible Things happened, when Eros m***s, there was a pleasing sense of not knowing what would happen next. A sense of wide-open possibilities. Quite rare in TV drama.
Well, they’ve got one more season – ten episodes – to do, and finish, whatever comes next.
Personally I hope we see more stuff in this vein, it’s an underused premise.
Prospect on Netflix was solid.
I think Daniel prefers the in-system politics and squabbling over resources and such. Whereas I’m still trying to get past the Belter patois, which I just find distracting.
Exactly this. I think we’ve had rather a lot of swoopy space opera with sturm und drang and wormholes and BEMs and rayguns. I rather like thoughtful world-building, and the Belter society is well-thought out and consistent.
Also rewatched the 1980s mini-series of Porterhouse Blue…
Didn’t know about this.
I will have to look for it.
I have seen Blott on the Landscape, it was on TV in NZ about 1994.
Discovered and read all the Tom Sharpe books around 1990’s and occasionally do a re-read when I need something easy and cheerful.
I should very much enjoy a trip aboard the Rocinante as I like lasagna, coffee and zero G sex.
I assume.
I was always amused that they used my (well, not my personal) SpaceMouse Enterprise as the navigation controls for the Rocinante.
Exactly this.
Well, it’s the interaction of the in-system politics and the wider drama that gives the thing its flavour, I suppose. For instance, I quite liked Murtry’s “post office” speech about what colonising new worlds would most likely entail.
I think we’ve had rather a lot of swoopy space opera with sturm und drang and wormholes and BEMs and rayguns.
I think you’re being a little unfair there – we’re five seasons in and still no aliens or a single raygun. So far, all we’ve seen are the bizarre technological leftovers of a seemingly extinct alien civilisation. And even then, the politics and grime are still present. Who those beings were, and who or what did them in, is still merely implied. (Though the implications become more pronounced in the last moments of the season five finale.) And the central MacGuffin has been handled in a way that’s often been inventive. Again, the Eros episode, or building the Ring, or Metallic Table Miller.
I rather like thoughtful world-building, and the Belter society is well-thought out and consistent.
Yes, though not, I think, appealing.
As we’ve said before, the series as a whole doesn’t quite cohere or reach its full potential. No episode hits a ‘9’. Bits of it are great and genuinely surprising – the relocations and transformations of very large things, for instance. And other bits are dull and hackneyed – Holden and Naomi being obvious weak points.
Honk!
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/1358026983129698305
Honk!
Well, I’m persuaded: The utter lunacy of these trans rights people only more firmly establishes their claims. It would be intolerant to disagree. /sarcasm
Honk ! but with an airhorn from a diesel locomotive.
Honk ! but with an airhorn from a diesel locomotive.
I would suggest replacing “eat the rich” with “eat the left” but the meat would be very fatty.
Honk! Voice of Sanity detected.
Well, I’m persuaded
The combination of adolescent profanity and clown makeup just screams intellectual and moral authority.
“Re: The Expanse”
Great fun for about 20 minutes, then the Jar Jar Binks language kicked in… “why, no bomba bossman…”
Yikes.
still no aliens […]. So far, all we’ve seen are the bizarre technological leftovers of a seemingly extinct alien civilisation.
Well, that’s my point. The Expanse pulls a kind of bait and switch, where it looks like you’re getting a mostly-hard-SF near future political drama, and then you’ve got aliens and wormholes. The books were the same; Corey brought in the Epstein Drive because he thought realistic sublight travel times made it too hard to write stories. Good writers don’t need crutches.
though not, I think, appealing
*Shrugs* Diff’rent strokes. I gave Bosch a try and didn’t make it through the first episode, again because I’ve just seen so much cop drama that one more of it needs to be something original.
Whereas I’m still trying to get past the Belter patois, which I just find distracting.
That reminds me of Larry Niven’s unfortunate experiments with unpronounceable names.
Great fun for about 20 minutes, then the Jar Jar Binks language kicked in… “why, no bomba bossman…”
That bad?
“That bad?”
Dis is nutsin!
Today in racism? Plowing your neighbor’s driveway. For free. Oh, don’t you know they are wise to your fascist tricks?
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack
Honk!
Just another man claiming claiming he can do things better than a woman.
The Expanse pulls a kind of bait and switch, where it looks like you’re getting a mostly-hard-SF near future political drama, and then you’ve got aliens and wormholes.
What happens when a sort-of familiar world, with sort-of familiar politics and familiar physics, encounters something altogether different seems to be a key point of the series. (I haven’t read the books, so I can’t comment on them.)
Corey brought in the Epstein Drive because he thought realistic sublight travel times made it too hard to write stories. Good writers don’t need crutches.
On the other hand, long, tedious journeys between colonies, and slowing the pace of physical interaction down to months and years, even decades, could get pretty tiresome, dramatically. In terms of a TV series that large numbers of people might actually watch, it’s not obvious how any dramatic momentum could be conjured or sustained. It would, I think, be rather limiting.
Sort of, “Year six, month two, day 29. Still not there yet…” I mean, if getting from colony A to colony B takes – effectively, dramatically – forever, with little hope of having a physical effect on anything as you travel, then you might as well make your drama earthbound and set it in a small, terraced house.
[ Edited. ]
We are often treated on here to morbidly fascinating tales of opinionated self-important students and educators.
It’s not just a “young people” problem though………..
https://youtu.be/l17UIwAFOyk
On the other hand, long, tedious journeys between colonies, and slowing the pace of physical interaction down to months and years, even decades, could get pretty tiresome, dramatically…
I agree strongly. And it is unwise to dismiss FTL drives with “Good writers don’t need crutches” as this would dismiss most of the great sf writers.
Sort of, “Year six, month two, day 29. Still not there yet…”
More likely, “Year 100…”
I agree strongly.
Well, it seems to be asking an awful lot of a writer, especially if that writer wants to have a successful series, and a career. There are of course any number of creative choices one could, in theory, make. But not all of them are commercially plausible, or indeed interesting.
The Expanse has made use of the normal-physics time required for even messages to reach their intended recipient halfway across the solar system – arriving last-minute or tragically late, etc. But it’s harder to see how you could wring sustained and compelling drama, week after week, out of a situation in which a metal box full of people takes, say, sixteen years to get to a place, only for them to find that their journey was a waste of time and effort.
Tune in next week!
Well, it seems to be asking an awful lot of a writer
It eliminates a vast number of possible stories, and we all know of many very fine stories which depend on FTL travel.
Gregory Benford eschews FTL travel (see his fine Galactic Center novels and the Bowl of Heaven trilogy which he wrote with Larry Niven) but who would want to reject Ringworld, Dune, and the Foundation series?
It’ll be interesting to see how they handle Foundation later this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series)
It’ll be interesting to see how they handle Foundation later this year.
Will have to wait and see, but I am uneasy: the story is premised on a secret cabal of super-smart people who conspire to create a new Galactic Empire which is ostensibly democratic but is really run by that cabal. Just the thing to appeal to technocracy-loving sf fans and to virtually everyone on the left.
Puritans got nothing on today’s woke-scolds
Will have to wait and see, but I am uneasy
I will not bother to waste money betting on whether they will conveniently omit The Mule, who was introduced precisely because Asimov realized that the Great Man theory of history actually does have some merit, and his metaphor for the bold new technocratic future sure to come after WWII didn’t work quite as well as he thought. Se also Gibson, William.
I’m not going to bother engaging with the “how dare you dismiss FTL drives”, because I didn’t, and I don’t feel like reiterating what I already said about The Expanse.
The Mule will probably have an orange face.
His impotence will be highlighted again and again and again and……
and his metaphor for the bold new technocratic future sure to come after WWII didn’t work quite as well as he thought.
It seldom does. It’s why dystopian fiction tends to work more often than utopian fiction. Too often the transformative element in fiction, whether it’s a technology or an ideology, acts as if human nature is a blank slate to be wiped clean and written anew. A good ol’ dystopia says not so fast transy I’m not going to put up with this shit. I know, real “fill-in-the-blank” hasn’t been tried yet.
*Shrugs* Diff’rent strokes.
Yes, absolutely. The Belter political hoo-hah is, for me, for the most part, less engaging – except when it entails highly-strung narcissists firing stealth-tech-coated asteroids at inhabited planets – but it’s just a matter of personal taste, not some high principle. As I said, I have trouble getting past the patois – I understand the point of it, why it’s there, but for me, as a viewer, it’s an obstacle.
The Mule, who was introduced precisely because Asimov realized that the Great Man theory of history actually does have some merit
Yes, although afterwards the (secret) Second Foundation defeated the Mule and continued with its project to institute the aforementioned technocratic state.
Caveat: there were later Foundation prequels and sequels, but I’m ignoring them because they were written so much later and because I know little having given up on them after 1-1/2 novels.
It would be interesting to learn what Asimov thought of that central conceit later in his career, say in the 1970’s. I’ve never run across a relevant essay or recording, though.
Though I’ve much enjoyed The Expanse overall, season six possibly progressing to an our-heroes-versus-the-super-ancient-evil-race storyline is keeping my expectations lukewarm. Up to now the Big Bad has been human shortcomings, which just happened to be interacting with a runaway power tool from a far more advanced, extinct civilization.
The narrative arcs of Miller 1.0/Julie 1.0/Julie 2.0 and Miller 2.0 are the most memorable to me. They’re great translations of film noire principles into a hard(ish) sci-fi setting, and Miller goes out (twice) in a very fitting way.
“I can’t feel my hands” is now one of the most memorable lines I’ve encountered in any genre of fiction.
I understand the point of it, why it’s there, but for me, as a viewer, it’s an obstacle.
It’s tricky to find the right balance between authenticity and comprehensibility. I tend to think that a very light touch is best.
a runaway power tool from a far more advanced, extinct civilization
I wonder how many stories could be summarized with that line. Love it.
I wonder how many stories could be summarized with that line.
Mass Effects 1-3 come immediately to mind.
and Miller goes out (twice) in a very fitting way.
Yes, Miller became much more interesting after he died. As it were. His metallic-furniture-scrap-pile form was quite something.
The Expanse pulls a kind of bait and switch, where it looks like you’re getting a mostly-hard-SF near future political drama, and then you’ve got aliens and wormholes.
This I definitely agree with in the sense I could have taken a couple more seasons with Miller and Anderson Dawes on Ceres and around Eros and Ganymede, etc.. before we got into the blue goo.
Noir doesn’t get done enough and I felt it got short shrift here just as it got interesting.
Space Noir on an asteroid(s)…. yes bloody please.
The best birthday present I ever got was a medical training device we called the Dial-a-Prostate. My buddy dated a pharmaceutical rep and she was handing these things out to proctologists. It was a little turntable with six model prostates and a cover. In the side of the cover there was a finger-sized hole through which the trainee felt the prostate for size, hard spots, etc. Maybe the best drinking game I’ve ever played, since by the end of the night everyone in the place was pretty much a licensed proctologist. Oh college, I miss you terribly
The best birthday present I ever got was a medical training device we called the Dial-a-Prostate.
I’m going to need a moment to process that.
“I wonder how many stories could be summarized with that line. ”
Kornbluth’s “The Little Black Bag”
“Dial-a-Prostate”
Misread that, I did. And I’m not the only one, either.
I wonder how many stories could be summarized with that line.
Something something premise done way too often to be interesting any more something something
The best birthday present I ever got was a medical training device we called the Dial-a-Prostate.
Sorry, hits a little too clost to home. Had a cystoscopy and a traditional prostate exam yesterday.
acts as if human nature is a blank slate to be wiped clean and written anew
There’s a genre shorthand for neo-cyberpunk called “Crime Did Not”, from the tagline “The world changed. Crime did not”. The point, and it goes right back to Gibson’s essay The Gernsbach Continuum, is that human nature doesn’t change when technology does. We’re still the same tribal primates we were 250,000 years ago, we just have iPhones and nukes now.
We’re still the same tribal primates we were 250,000 years ago, we just have iPhones and nukes now.
Quite!
Had a cystoscopy and a traditional prostate exam yesterday.
Wouldn’t it be funny if it was done by one of Uncle Mikey’s drinking buddies? And he wasn’t really a doctor?
Wouldn’t it be funny if it was done by one of Uncle Mikey’s drinking buddies?
Now that you mention it…it might explain a lot of today’s discomfort.
“and a traditional prostate exam”
Hmm.
What, exactly, would constitute a non traditional prostate exam?
This was my feeling as well. At least from the books, of which I made it through the first only through sheer tenacious hope that it would get back on track. When it became clear that it was well and truly headed into Jordy Verrill in Spaaaaaaace territory, I moved on to other things.