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Heard a review that it wasn’t so great, so skipped it. Seeing the original just gives me warm, fuzzy feelings of my parents watching some odd TV show with a giant white balloon (a pre-schooler’s interpretation). Should I bother adding the remake to the Netflix queue?
-Pat.
[b]Zack wrote:[/b]
[quote]I must admit that E C Tubb was always my favourite 1999 author as a kid. I always went back to his novelisations first, not that I didn’t like the others (after all it was Space 1999 🙂 ) but I just clicked with Tubb’s style. [/quote][b]and Mateo wrote:[/b]
[quote]Rogue Planet and Android Planet are my two favorites of the 70s original novels.Mateo[/quote]
Hmm. Interesting. Although I enjoyed the storylines, ([u]Rogue Planet[/u] more preferably), Tubb’s style never clicked with me. I found his characters too brusque. Working into the Powys time line will be a welcome addition.
That being said, I would [i]love [/i]to get my mitts on the revised [u]Earthfall[/u], and [u]Earthbound[/u]. Fanderson, are you listening….? How ’bout printin’ a few more? I know Earthfall is available, but to justify a Fanderson membership to my checkbook, I’d like to see both available.
I find it fascinating to see where Powys believes these stories meld, e.g., [u]Android Planet[/u] right after “The Infernal Machine.” What was the impetus not to put it right after “Testament of Arkadia?”
-Pat.
Yes – a dark area near the bottom, and it looks darker in general in the area behind the body. Much better resolution than the Donruss card, BTW – just what we need: high resolution of a yucky thing.
-Pat.
Ah – OK. That makes things clearer. Thanks for the insight. I found the passage very poetic, and it almost mirrored some other relationships that that are portrayed (but I won’t belabor that point).
Of course, then there is the whole hieroglyphic/Space Brain thingy that it brings to mind, too. What we’ve got there is a failure to communicate, as I recall.
I’m thinking I’ve got to reread with some of these now elucidated points. Then, I can smack my forehead and say,”Duh!”
-P.
[b]blatham wrote:[/b]
[quote][spoiler]…The observation above, primarily about Helena Russell, might just as well be describing Susurra. Poor Susurra chose safety a long, long time ago. Susurra had a false intimacy with the Leira, was “herself” a false self. She had no genuine loyalty to the Leira. And “she” denied herself a meaningful existence — she was so close to being content in our universe, but could never truly embrace her new home — she was locked in the past. She is probably the most tragic of the MUFs, hedging her bets, getting her “narcissistic supply” as it were, but couldn’t really be alive.
Helena’s got some issues. But Susurra is a representation of those issues taken out to the furthest extreme, the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing. At least to this reader. She is the opposite of the Alphans — while she adapted a long time ago to hide, her adaptation ended there. The Alphans are still growing, still becoming who they are. Susurra couldn’t do that.[/spoiler]
[/quote]
Was this something you intended, or did it evolve as such?
Inquiring minds want to know! :blink:
-P.
Aw, shucks, Bill. Your stuff is fun to read and provides just enough unanswered questions to keep a person wanting more, without being abstruse. BTW, Mary’s Monster is coming to Yellowstone w/ us. I shall sit by a lake and read it. Without having read a word of it yet, I just get the feeling that that setting will be most apropos.
Anyhow, my question is, what’s the deal with the epilogue in [u]Alpha[/u]? I won’t ask a more specific question; general questions lets the answerer lead the discussion where he wants it to go. B)
-Pat.
[b]Steve Roby wrote:[/b]
[quote]I just noticed the topic about a few last copies of Miss Freedom being sold on eBay, but I don’t see any there now. [/quote]If it was put up with a Buy it Now option (like Mary’s Monster was), I think if somebody buys it, it disappears. I don’t know for certain about that being eBay’s policy, but it would make sense.
-P.
FYI – Mary’s Monster arrived on my doorstep today. He’ll be coming on vacation with us 🙂 . I had intended to pick up the book several years ago for the ex-fiancĂ©e of a friend who was an English Lit grad student & a Shelly fan, but waited too long (both to get the book and before she became an ex & moved away). Glad you’ve now made these available for the Limited Time Offer. Look forward to reading it.
-Pat.
Cricket,
Check out [url=http://mondbasisalpha.heim.at/texte/geschichten/paper.htm]this link[/url]. I stumbled across it recently – maybe you’ve read it already. It was new to me. Tell me this author doesn’t deserve a nomination!
-Pat.
PRODIGAL, eh? According to which definition, or a play on both? Food for thought.
Anyway, this thread has gotten 4 replies with three nominees. 4 replies – that’s like, 5% of the registered membership. Sort of like a school budget election, when 95% of people complain afterward when the vote doesn’t go like they wanted it to. Maybe registered users are not familiar with the genre; therefore, would a formal poll accurately reflect a consensus?
Two of the authors mentioned are active, talented, and probably willing to contribute. So…chocolate or vanilla? How about a scoop of both, or a twisty soft-serve collaboration? Even butter pecan fans can’t complain too much. Ice cream is ice cream – in general, it’s all good. (Except, as James Thurber notes, peach. It’s never as good as you think it’s going to be :dry: .)
Just my unsolicited opinion.
-Pat.
Edit – I should note that all three are talented writers, but only two seem to actively writing S:19 fanfic currently. Don’t want to step on any toes…
We just spent some time writing about HR in [u]Remembering Julia[/u], but probably this was as much if not more, a JK story. This is JK’s “We’re not in Kansas, anymore” tale. Just a few of thoughts/observations/questions about that…Stephen Jansen, please jump in when you have something to add. Really. It’s good to know if I picked up on what you intended.
[spoiler]It’s established early on that JK is/has been ambitious, but not ruthlessly so. This could probably be expected of someone who rises high within an organization, and to be the head of anything on Alpha, one probably has to want it, and have the ability to accomplish it, not just one or the other. For example, in the opening scene, he is on a salvage survey with Alan. They locate an ill-fated Eagle, yet Koenig’s first concerns are what they can use from it. His first question was not about the pilot. In one way, this is like a general who moves little miniature tanks around a battlefield map, while he is safely hundreds or thousands of miles away, but who is not thinking about the men who are in the tank. However, Koenig did go out to survey the waste dumps in [b]Breakaway[/b], and he had little patience with Simmonds who wanted to issue a communiqué, so he is not unthinking or unfeeling when it comes to people in the general sense. Also, folks are genuinely happy to see him when he arrives on Sept 9th; they’re not rolling their eyes and saying, Please, not him.I would hazard a guess that this story takes place 3-4 months after Breakaway. They are just settling down from the initial survival mode, JK and HR have developed a friendship to the point that he’s got an inkling of what makes her tick, and she the same of him, yet he has not come to the realization that he has to be concerned with everyone on that base as people, not just as positions/numbers. This sense is much more fully developed by the time we get to [b]The Troubled Spirit.[/b]
That he and his senior staff need to be open with the Alphans has got to be a given. After all, a cover-up was what got them into their situation in the first place. Everybody is going to be concerned when the slightest bit of information is perceived as hidden, some more sensitized than others. Some dwell on it longer, too, like Sanderson and his crew later in [b]The Séance Spectre[/b]. So, he dared not cut off transmission from the airlock scene, and he, to his credit, realizes this. Nevertheless, there is still some undercurrent of maintaining his position as commander, as well as maintaining the morale of the base. He wants to avoid a string of suicides and/or riot; a riot could lead not only to his checking out of the top slot, but losing his life as well, in the worst case scenario. However, he is still willing to leave another skeleton behind in this struggle, in the person of Helena Russell and her vulnerability. In fact, he is almost taking advantage of that very open wound of hers. He has to admit, when pressed, that he really doesn’t understand that gravity of what he is asking her to do. Bonus points for being honest, though.
Guilt gets piled on guilt over the course of the story. HR is obviously annoyed with the fact he had no idea who Julia and Richard Vale is/was. She’s equally annoyed that he can’t seem to grasp the concept that, although he may be …what’s the word here?… not happy, not contented…erm, I’m going to say he’s OK with the fact they are out in deep space, because that’s where he’s always wanted to be. Not the right circumstances, but the astronaut/explorer in him is digging it a little bit, until they meet up with the first race that wants to kill them all. While they were still in orbit, the base commander wouldn’t have to worry about who the transient researchers were, or the people who restocked the drink dispensers, so long as they didn’t get in the way and made sure the cappuccino machines always worked. They didn’t have to worry if didn’t know them from Adam – and they probably preferred it that way. Sure, it’s nice if the boss knows your name, but if he doesn’t, you get your hazard pay and retire early. Now, however, he is the captain of the ship, and he’s going to have to wrap his mind around the fact that he has a moral responsibility to be the last one on the lifeboat if the time comes. I think he is already aware of this at some level, but it has yet to be front and center.
Then, there is the security guard who has to remind Koenig of his name. No intentional swipe, but just another little reminder to JK about needing to get in touch.
Thirdly, Carter says he doesn’t need a file to know who Richard Vale was. He was, by all accounts, a really great guy, who faced a certain death when he walked back to the base. He was probably thinking there was some slim chance of a miracle, as opposed to certain death by asphyxiation, but has to know the odds were slim.
Finally, there is Julia Vale who hits him with everything he doesn’t want to hear. Yeah, she is drugged up, and the high doses of the Triazolam (a benzodiazepine, not barbiturate, BTW) would act like alcohol, in the sense that you’d be “disinhibited “ and less likely to hold back anything you wanted to say. Interestingly, Triazolam is one of the anxiolytics that has some really nasty side-effects, including psychosis, so, well-played in your drug of choice, Mr. Jansen!
She prods him with the nobody cares about the little people angle, and points out that she thinks some people and like hermits who have found hide-away heaven. When you think about it, go through the command staff…JK maybe just wants to get away from Earth (fed up with so-called humanity and progress, and it was the place where his wife was killed) , HR wants to get away from everything (she values life too much to end it physically, but she can commit emotional suicide), Victor is happy anywhere he can do research (can’t see him romping in the sunshine wherever he is), Carter is a gung-ho pilot who doesn’t have much a backstory, but he chooses Alpha over earth when given the choice, Kano can take his love wherever, if he can find a big enough flashdrive to transfer Computer (and gets a little too close by the time Born for Adversity rolls around), Morrow is there to please his father, who he can never please, because he was killed by a Queller Drive, and Sandra’s fiancé (Peter Rockwell from BoW) is a pilot, so she’s probably lucky(?) he wasn’t on waste-dispersal duty on the 13th. So, she’s right, and they all ought to think about that, not just JK.
Anyhow, I would say his turning point was as he was running to get to his pressure suit when HR went too far in her analogy. She may have been speaking metaphorically about the outside being only blackness and empty space, but that’s what Julia was looking forward to. You can almost see HR saying, “Oh, crap,” when she realized what she’d said. (And by the way, Helena, cool your jets about delineating the pathology of radiation overdose. I’m sure that’s really what Julia wanted to hear all about at that point. Lovely, just lovely. Like Commissioner Dixon telling you all about being drawn into Jupiter’s gravity well.) JK wanted Kano to cut the transmission in case something went horribly wrong, which it did, in order to stop base-wide chaos. However, in actually grabbing her and pulling her in, he opened himself to the truism of the proverb that in saving a life, you are responsible for that life. Julia Vale was one person, but she then became emblematic of each Alphan.
One thing I was not clear on: HR’s beginning psychotherapy courses…Continuing Medical Education/brushing up on rusty skills? Or undergoing some therapy herself? Or, beginning sessions with the Alphans to avoid similar things happening in the future? Just wondering your intent, because one could interpret it several ways.
Finally, connecting this story to Resurrection, it’s as if these tendencies to be a bit autocratic are things he keeps in check. When Balor introduces his “fear factor” to activate the fight-or-flight response, JK gets downright ugly, and not afraid to hurt anybody physically or emotionally to get what he wants.[/spoiler]
That is my theory, it is mine, and belongs to me and I own it, and what it is too. (John Cleese, as Anne Elk 🙂 )
It’s really no big deal. Maybe I should have smiled rather than cringed – it’s my fault, because I tend to be “tight” about being literal. My husband routinely asks if something I am watching is “on tape” or “live”, and I usually reply neither – it’s a DVD, and he says whatever. That’s just how we talk – you’re right. So, yes, her statement is a reference to her formative years. After all, in Outlook Express, there is an option for “Cc”- carbon copy. When was the last time you even saw carbon paper? :laugh:
Helena’s typewriter, on the other hand…
I think I’ll just shut up for a while now.
Edit – (just can’t help myself) – That one phrase about “The events…” DID manage to whet our appetites and get us thinking about what it might mean, so in that respect, it was very effective. 🙂
[b]DavidW wrote:[/b]
[quote][quote]Oh, that reminds me…. I had to chuckle at a good line Helena used in discussing that incident for her log: “Following events on the planet Ekimmu—already recorded on film….” [/quote]
[b]PatS replied:[/b][quote][color=#800000]Truth be known, I cringed a bit at the anachronism (film?!?!?), though it is consistent with the video recording in “BoW”[/color].[/quote]
[b]DavidW then wrote:[/b]
Actually, I’m pretty sure the BOW camera Clive Kander “was” digital. It looked too small for film, and he is later putting square cards (some S19 analogue to flash memory?) into a viewer and watching video.Unfortunately, that does add strength to your suggestion this written statement is a little anachronistic. Then again, people sometimes do tend to use older terms even when the tech is newer. For music, I still say “record” from time to time, even though I generally say the tech-neutral(?) “album” most of the time. It’s funny because I only ever owned a few vinyl items (including the sound — dialogue and such — of the movie “Star Wars”) via gifts, and when I first started buying music, it was as tapes and then CD’s.
So maybe it’s merely a linguistic anachronism on the character’s part rather than the author’s. Difficult to say.
–DW[/quote]
[b] So, PatS concedes:[/b]
In that respect, it does differentiate between a) Recorded on her log; b) Recorded long-hand by JK in his journal á la Testament of Arkadia; c) Typed up by her á la Dragon’s Domain; d) Simply recorded by the computer mainframe.So, considering those, the clarification is fine – in other words, they have a video record. Good ’nuff for me.
-P.
