Tag: Fantasy

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Miss two weeks and they pull the rug out from under you:

…the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last year of the series on The WB

At least the WB had the decency to let them know in time to do some sort of wrap-up, unlike the way certain other shows were treated by channels that shall not be named.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the offbeat has to make way for the mainstream. I don’t care if the WB puts up some new “reality” show, as long as I can find the kind of shows I like to watch. With so many hundreds of cable and satellite stations available, you’d think there’d be room for shows like VR.5 and Crusade.

Still, Angel managed five years, which is pretty damn respectable – especially in the modern era of cancelling shows without even airing half a season.

Joss Whedon sums up the perils of producing anything that strays too far from the beaten path:

“Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the road less traveled by
and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW.
I totally shoulda took the road
that had all those people on it.
Damn.”

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I’m beginning to understand why someone would jump out of a bathtub and go streaking through the streets with a fantastic new idea. Recently, in the shower, my brain decided it wanted to write a graphic novel. The day after, it worked out a genetic explanation of channeling in the Wheel of Time universe. If you haven’t read any Robert Jordan, or if you don’t know basic genetics, this won’t make a huge lot of sense. If you’ve read some but not all, be warned that this explanation contains information you may not have reached. None of it is serious, but if you’re a fanatic about not being spoiled, watch out. I’ll break the article before I get into speculation that people might not have heard or want to hear.

Here’s my model. There are three factors controlling channeling ability: whether you can do it, whether you have the spark or can learn, and how strong you are. Strength and sparkiness don’t seem to be related, and neither seems to be related to sex. What I propose is that basic channeling ability is a recessive, sex-linked trait. There are variations of a gene on both the X and Y chromosomes, X’ and Y’ to borrow from Katherine Kurtz, that enable awareness of, respectively, saidar and saidin. In order to channel, someone has to have this variation on both their sex chromosomes. So an X’Y male can’t channel, but an X’Y’ can. X’X women and X’Y or XY’ men can’t even sense the Source. The elegant part of this is that it explains why men who can channel or learn can sense when a woman is channeling: they have the X’. It also explains why channeling-capable men can only tell other men can channel when they do it, while women have an easy time telling when other women can channel (sensing other Aes Sedai, seeing the glow, knowing who’s sparky), since they have double sensitivity to saidar.

Sparkiness is easy compared to that. It seems to be a simple dominant-recessive or absent-present allele situation. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say there are two possible places on non-X-or-Y chromosomes that the allele (call it “spontaneity,” S for absent and s for present) can appear. If someone has one, and all other genetic markers are in order, he/she is a learner; two means he/she has the spark. This makes for a very easy Punnett square giving about twice as many sul’dam as damane.

I won’t address strength, since it’s not a black-and-white issue and probably involves a lot of genes that most people just don’t use, not having the right matchups in spontaneity or sensitivity. However, I do want to look at what happens when you examine a few special families…. Continue reading →

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen a number of articles in places like Time Magazine about how popular culture is abandoning science fiction for fantasy, usually tying it into either pessimism about technology and the future (“Where’s my flying car!”) or nostalgia in a post-9/11 world. They generally cite the enormous success of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings as compared to, say, Star Trek: Nemesis.

Bull.

You want to know why fantasy is doing so well these days? Someone finally made some fantasy films that were good. What did we have before? Dungeons and Dragons. Krull. Sure, there were a few bright spots like The Princess Bride, but if you look at the IMDB’s Top 10 rated fantasy films there’s not one between 1980 and 2000 – and that includes The Empire Strikes Back and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

And somehow all of these articles ignore the box-office success of Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones. Somehow I expect The Matrix Reloaded is going to do just fine, despite the supposed failure of sci-fi.

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OK, first I’d like to stress that I did like most of The Two Towers the first time through. It was mainly the non-ending that bugged the heck out of me, and that was the impression I was left with leaving the theater.

I can say now that not only does the movie hold up to a second viewing, it was actually more enjoyable this time around. Perhaps because I knew where it was stopping, it didn’t bother me so much that it stopped there.

One review I read lamented not seeing the developing friendship between Gimli and Legolas. That puzzled me, since I saw it even during my first viewing of the film. From Legolas ready to defend Gimli to Eomer, to their camaraderie during the battle: Legolas offering to get Gimli a box to stand on (and Gimli smiling at the joke instead of growling), their competition over who can kill more orcs, etc. Actually, that competition was one of my favorite character bits from the battle, and I was glad to see it make it to the screen.

Most of the story changes didn’t bother me much. Continue reading →

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A few months ago I read an article about filmmaking which talked about why the ending of a film is so important: it’s not just that the audiences want to see it come out a certain way, but the ending is the last impression the audience is left with. A film can be fantastic all the way through and then fall on its face at the end, and that’s the impression people will be left with.

Now I loved The Fellowship of the Ring, both the theatrical release and the special edition. I enjoyed most of The Two Towers. But the ending fell flat on its face. Helm’s deep simply stopped, and the Frodo/Sam story did nothing more than present a vague threat from Gollum.

Imagine if The Empire Strikes Back had ended not with Luke getting his replacement hand and Lando and Chewbacca heading off to rescue Han, but had instead ended with the escape from Cloud City. That’s what this felt like.

Visually, the film is amazing. The effects, the scenery, the sets, costumes and battle sequences are stunning. The acting, like last time, is excellent. And yet between the jumbled editing and the lack of an ending, the film is far less satisfying than the previous one.

I’m left with two conclusions: either New Line Cinema stepped in to “protect the franchise” instead of trusting the people who got the first one right, or they had a harder time cutting it down to three hours and made poorer choices.

At this point I’m going to bring up some specifics. Continue reading →

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I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack for a while, but kept not finding it. A few weeks ago, we were listening to a copy of Holst’s The Planets we had just picked up. I’d heard the whole suite before, but had only heard “Mars” recently, so one section of “Jupiter” just leaped out at me. I was absolutely certain I had heard something very like it, but not exactly the same, in a movie, probably sword-and-sorcery. I tried several net searches, but had no luck – it’s not as if you can plug a few notes into Google and search for pieces containing a melody.

A while later it occurred to me that it might have been from Conan, so I tried to find it online, only to learn it was out of print. This looks like a job for eBay! It took a couple of auctions to get it (I really hate snipers), but I did, and the CD showed up in the mail a few days ago.

And sure enough, the piece I couldn’t help but think of while listening to “Jupiter” was there: track 12, “The Kitchen/The Orgy.” Interestingly the liner notes go into how Basil Poledouris constructed the piece, but don’t make a single mention of Holst, despite other tracks acknowledging influences such as Orff’s Carmina Burana, or the Gregorian chant “Dies Irae.” But the similarity is undeniable – even more similar than “Charging Fort Wagner” from James Horner’s Glory soundtrack or Joel McNeely’s battle music from the Verdun 1916 episode of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is to Orff’s “O Fortuna” (neither of which credits that influence either).

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J. Gregory Keyes has fast become one of those authors whose work I will pick up knowing nothing more than who wrote it. I enjoyed his work in the Babylon 5 and Star Wars universes, but after reading the four novels of The Age of Unreason and these two, I can say I’ll definitely be picking up The Briar King when it comes out in January.

Now, The Age of Unreason is probably Keyes’ most well-known work to date. (If the title doesn’t sound familiar, chances are you’ve heard of the first novel, Newton’s Cannon). It takes place in an alternate Eighteenth Century in which Isaac Newton discovered the key to alchemy, transforming the world with new technology… and setting off an arms race of sorts. What begins as an alternate history becomes an epic battle for the future of the world, and ultimately of humanity itself.

While I’d recommend someone curious about Keyes’ writing start with Newton’s Cannon, I’d like to call attention to his earliest published novels, The Waterborn and The Blackgod, collectively known as The Chosen of the Changeling.
Continue reading →

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