Lost returns for it's sixth and final season. And there was much rejoicing.
It appears that the writers have decided to throw the entire Science Fictional kitchen sink at the plot, making it even more bonkers and huge fun, whilst still being touching. Last season we had time skipping, this season divergent realities. And the fountain of eternal youth protected by a temple and tribe led by a crazy samurai guy. And a man who turns into a smoke monster.
The now traditional Woah moment at the start of the first episode was great, with a crazy underwater flythrough and The Island underwater. The idea of seeing what would have happened if the plane crash hadn't happened is lovely, unexpected meetings, remembering what the characters were like at the start of the journey whilst we now know everything about them. The question is how will the parallel reality touch the original reality? Will they meet? Will they stay as two separate stories?
Meanwhile on The Island our trusty heroes are looking a bit battered, bloodied and tired. Everything has been thrown at them. I particularly felt for Sawyer, again, as Juliet died. Again. When Hurley suggested they venture into a hole in the ground underneath fortifications no one batted an eyelid. They've seen it all now. Even the secret tribe in the temple guarding the Fountain Of Eternal Youth, didn't phase them that much. They look tired and beaten. I don't think they'll stay that way for long.
As for John Locke. He's dead. Long live John Locke, or rather that nasty guy who hates Jacob and can turn into The Smoke Monster. Aha, so he's the smoke monster? Or another smoke monster? If the Black Smoke Monster was protecting the temple was that Jacob? No idea. The real core question is what are the two sides? And what exactly are they fighting over?
Awesome fun. Welcome back Lost.
If you're in the US, or can magic up a US IP address then you can watch Lost online for free at abc.com, if you're in the UK the only way to watch Lost online is through some Sky Player jiggery pokery, and that's not free.
The Official Star Wars site has an article on designing the Mandalorians and also a guide on how to draw them.
So how do you film an outstanding, critically acclaimed, prize winning, "unfilmable" literary novel? With conviction, style, soul and absolutely no compromise. Exactly as John Hillcoat has done.The film is amazing, beautiful, sad, heart-wrenching, distressing and haunting. Just like the book.
The more I've thought about it, the better it gets.
The visual scenes of apocalypse are bleak but restrained, the soundtrack is perfect and emotional. Even the voice-over works in a melancholy way.
The Science Fictional idea, the end of the world is at the very core of the film because it takes away everything. It is no temporary disaster, not a moment to be survived, but a new, horrible, world.
But there is hope in the film. More so for me that the ending of the book (despite it being the ultimate in faithful adaptations). Maybe it was because I knew the story, second time round as it were? Maybe it was the visual aspects of the film? The love of the father-son relationship shone in the film (with some truly outstanding acting), as did their humanity, giving me more hope, despite the sadness.
As you might be able to tell, I'm struggling for words. All I can say in the end is read the book and go and see this film. Essential Science Fiction.
Small Miracles by Edward M. Lerner is a novel about nanobots. Unfortunately that's all it's about. There's one idea and it's stretched to a novel length. That idea is that nanobots have been crafted into an indestructible suit, a suit which injects the nanobots into your body in the case of first aid. The first time this happens the bots cross into the brain and begin to take over.
The setting is the corporation where the bots are made and it's uninspiring: offices, factory floors, laboratories. The external location is described multiply, covered with snow and cold, and is not the slightest bit enthralling. The effect is to deaden what should be an exciting idea.
Small Miracles suffers in comparison with other books about nanobots, most notably The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. The Diamond Age is dense and mysterious and exciting and stretches the idea of what may be possible with nanobots to the edge. Small Miracles is unfortunately thin and weak and the opposite end of the spectrum to The Diamond Age.
I assume that the science in Small Miracles is accurate, but to be honest I have no idea. After several paragraphs of Biology speak I switched off, forgot the acronyms and ignored the science. This is exactly my argument against Hard SF, when done badly it's tedious, even detracting/distracting. To enable all the science speak there was a lot of "So, Bob, what about the CSF?", "The CSF Alice? You mean the Curly Straight Foobars?" etc.
Which brings me onto the execution of the novel, the actual writing, which was not to my taste at all. Far too much telling. Far too much thinking out loud, italics, and spelling things out. I found it hard work, struggling to ignore the words and get pulled into the story.
Perhaps the market for Small Miracles may be the non-SF fan who wants a thin airport thriller? But for me, ultimately, nothing worked in this novel and I didn't enjoy it.
So, Dollhouse ends and despite the shaky start it turned into one of the most interesting and Science Fiction laden shows of the last few years.
The first four episodes of season one did it no favours, being nothing more than an adult Joe90 and playing up the sexy futuristic whorehouse in a way that obscured the heart of the story. Things started getting interesting when the technology started going wrong. It's hard to care about a main character who changes every week, who seems happy sleeping with rich LA men, whose only problems lay in minor tussles during engagements and whose origins remained clouded. Without knowing how Echo ended up in the Dollhouse it was hard to feel sympathy.
When the technology started glitching and Echo began to grow a personality the stories became more interesting. And not just Echo, but Siera and Victor too. And Topher and DeWitt. Suddenly everyone transcended the cardboard characters that they originally appeared to be, although this transformation didn't really shine until season two.
The Alpha plot of season one was a traditional good guy gone bad, turned psycho, story. At times it felt cliched, a bit too traditional. Once again though, over time, its true purpose was revealed: Alpha was a plot device to unleash Echo.
Come season two suddenly everything made more sense, hung together more, asked more questions, felt more risky and felt like Dollhouse had not only discovered what it intended to be, but had the convictions to stick to it. (Or maybe by that time the TV executives had given up on it and stopped meddling?) It doesn't matter, season two was really enjoyable Science Fiction, the technology moving from a plot enabler, to the core of the story and the cause of the apocalypse.
The timeboxed limit of twenty-six episodes in the end helped Dollhouse. Much fuss is made about cancellation of TV shows in the US, but the best shows are complete stories, with constraints, not never ending soap operas. In the UK a complete six part story is the norm, and even successful shows like Life On Mars try and wrap things up after a couples of series of eight. So in twenty six episodes of Dollhouse we got a full story, from nascent technology to all hell breaking loose. I'd argue that the story would have been better with even fewer episodes. The end brings focus. As the final few episodes of Dollhouse proved: dense, exciting, unexpected deaths (very Joss Whedon) and unexpected plot twists. It took chances with hive mind dream worlds inside mainframe computers. It pulled out a plot thread and revealed it winding through everything we had seen. It showed us an apocalypse.
(Let's for a moment forget about Epitaph Two, which provided an optimistic ending via a big reset button. It was a stylish pilot episode for a season that couldn't be made: Alpha as a good guy, Victor as a cyborg, Little Safe House On The Prairie, Topher crazy, Adele gentle. Thirteen episodes of that could have been good, trying to tie up the plot in one episode was a stretch too far.)
As you can tell, I liked Dollhouse a lot. It got better with time and the complications of the plot, when it turned from the early black and white into murky grey.
Complete.
Alt.Fiction the one day alternative fiction convention is back in 2010 after a break. The date is 12th June, in Derby, at QUAD "Derby's brand new state-of-the-art multi-media venue".
The line-up has yet to be confirmed but it looks like there will at least be a posse from BBC books.
I've been to a couple of the previous Alt.Fiction events and found them very enjoyable, with the single day format being quite convenient.
Found in the archives of the Official Star Wars site, here's some interesting Star Wars posters.
Some are ridiculous:
Some are cool:
Lost S06E01 + S06E02