Comic Book Report: Star Trek New Frontier

I cannot recommend this book.

It collects "Turnaround," a five-issue miniseries published by IDW in 2008. And while I realize it's part of an ongoing storyline, there's just too much "continuity bingo"--which is a phrase I just made up to describe the apparent need of many tie-in writers to include every single character from an existing series, even if there's no good story reason for those people to show up in a particular work. This often results in convoluted, nonsensical, and/or irrelevant plot twists.

All that aside, this book features not one, but two dei ex machina. Two. That's about two more than any reasonable story needs.

Oh yeah, and also? The Vulcan mind-meld does not work through walls. I don't care if the character happens to be half-Romulan. Both of those races are touch-telepaths. I don't mind it when writers make shit up, but you can't make up shit which contradicts existing shit.

More generally, I have issues with Peter David's writing. I know a lot of people love him, and I'll grant that he's good with plot and dialogue, but too many of his scenes play as overly colloquial or--in the worst case--juvenile. Sometimes I just couldn't believe these people were professional, career military officers and not teenagers.

And some scenes seem to have been written just because the writer thought they were funny, not because they fit into the narrative. There's a good scene in which viewing someone's vacation photos is compared to literal torture, but it's totally anachronistic here.

Finally: One layout idiosyncrasy that bugged me throughout the book was the lack of any thought bubbles or narration captions. Absolutely every piece of information was delivered through dialogue, even if it was a character talking to herself in a situation where that would make no sense. Which is weird, because Peter David has made quite a name for himself in comics.

That is all.

I am a LOLcat!

Think you can come up with a better caption for this photograph? I dare you!

Friday Flash Fiction: "Practice"

I don't remember why, but while driving around earlier this week I wondered aloud to D what the world might be like if people were fans of things besides TV shows and movies--if, for example, there was a fandom for medical doctors. And that's where this little vignette came from.

Read "Practice" at 512 Words or Fewer

Book Report: Tales of the Dominion War

If you're not a Star Trek fan, you can stop reading right now.

Tales of the Dominion War is, as you might imagine, an anthology of short stories set in the Deep Space Nine universe. Or, more accurately, in various parts of the Star Trek universe during the last two seasons of DSN. By that time, crossover between Trek series had become pretty common, and as a viewer, it was pretty exciting to see more of the fictional universe being fleshed out.

Media tie-ins are always tricky to do well. On the one hand, you want to include enough "real" or "canon" elements to show fans that you understand the setting; on the other hand, you don't want to just name-drop a bunch of characters without saying anything new or interesting about them.

That, in a nutshell, is why many of these stories didn't work for me. Writing aside, a lot of them seemed to aspire to be nothing more than the caulk of continuity--i.e., filling in storytelling gaps left by the TV series. If you think of the Dominion War like an actual, real-world conflict--say, Vietnam or WWII--there should be plenty of stories to tell about all sorts of different people who were involved. And since this is all fictional, it should be easy to make up some really compelling stories, right?

Maybe so, but this anthology didn't quite hit the mark for me. It's generally a bad sign when the introduction to a story has to explain that the pivotal character you're going to read about was featured in a different tie-in novel, and describe that character's connection to Trek canon--as if the editor knew that otherwise, the story itself wouldn't carry much weight. I skimmed through two or three of these stories because I knew I wasn't going to care much about their contents.

I do have to give props to my favorite piece, "Mirror Eyes," which manages to balance the elements I mentioned above. It's written in first person, as a series of journal entries, and brings the protagonist to life without veering into Mary Sue territory. It's also set between two seasons of DSN, so it doesn't suffer from episode-adjacent syndrome (in which a short story set immediately before, after, or during an existing TV episode inevitably begs comparison with same--and usually comes in second).

Finally, I have to mention that three of the featured authors--Heather Jarman, Michael A. Martin, and Andy Mangels--live in Portland, Oregon. 'oS! (That's Klingon for "represent.")

SnoutCast #6: Poor Time Management

We apologize for sucking even more than usual this week. Please send us your ideas for future show topics. We're dying here.


[ Download mp3 - 39 MB ]

00:00 - Disclaimer
01:25 - let's talk about timing!
03:30 - DeeAnn hates maps so much
07:00 - anyway, yeah, timing
09:05 - Clue design: how long should it take to solve a puzzle?
12:34 - don't call it skipping: bonus and emergency clues
13:10 - a must-see clue: the Bat-Blinker (device, action shot)
17:06 - how players experience The Game
20:58 - FoBiK follies
28:42 - event planning: not starting with puzzles
30:52 - how other GCs do it
34:49 - setting expectations through GC identity
36:44 - neither of us only DeeAnn has actually seen Field of Dreams
37:31 - plug for GC Summit 2010 (February 18th)
39:27 - plug for DASH 2 (April 24th)
41:40 - The End

Music: instrumentals from "Code Monkey," "Skullcrusher Mountain," "The Future Soon," "First of May," "Tom Cruise Crazy," "Re: Your Brains," and "My Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton

[ Subscribe to SnoutCast / iTunes link ]

Small, Medium, and Large

My three mobile computers, left to right: a smartphone (overpriced Apple iPhone 3G), a netbook (refurbished Acer Aspire One), and a laptop (piece-of-crap Lenovo Thinkpad T61p).

Lest you think I'm one of those ultra-early adopters who just has to have the latest shiny new gadget, let me point out that I acquired each of these machines for very specific reasons.

The iPhone (left) I got last May, right before our trip to Europe for Jeff and Marina's wedding. My old phone wasn't quad-band or GSM-capable, so I couldn't use it internationally; but that was also a convenient excuse to upgrade. My former employer had issued me a Blackberry for a couple of years, and I'd enjoyed having a "smartphone" to check my e-mail and calendar. For the record, the apps I use most these days are any of three Twitter clients (to access different accounts) and Google Maps--the latter especially for traffic updates, which our Prius' 2005 navigation system doesn't have. It's helped us on more than one Friday afternoon, when deciding whether to drive back from Portland during rush hour or wait it out somewhere.

The laptop (right) I got in early 2008, right after leaving my aforementioned former employer. I'd been using my work laptop, a very reliable IBM Thinkpad T43, for over four years, and I decided to stick with the same make. Or so I thought. Turns out that after Lenovo bought the Thinkpad brand from IBM, their products pretty much went to crap. I've griped and ranted about this before--the motherboard's already died once, as has the battery, and Lenovo's problems with wireless networking are well documented. But it did cost me a pretty penny, so I plan to run this clunker until it literally starts falling apart, and then I'll replace it with something better.

The netbook (center) is a recent acquisition from Woot. It's refurbished, but hasn't given me any problems yet (knock on wood). I got it for two main reasons: 1) to have a separate, dedicated webcam server; and 2) to have a backup portable unit when I need to take the laptop in for repairs again. (I fully expect that to happen at least once more before I retire it. I ponied up for the two-year extended warranty, and I'm going to get my money's worth, dammit.) Actually, there's also a third reason: to see if netbooks are actually usable in the long term. I played with an XO laptop a couple of years ago, and was not impressed with the interface, but the idea of a small portable that's actually useful continued to be compelling.

The funny thing is, the netbook has at least as much memory and processing power as both of my desktop machines (not pictured): a 2003 Dell PC and a 2005 Mac Mini (PowerPC, not Intel). They're both still creaking along, but playing full-screen video or running more than three applications at a time will bring them to their knees. I'm not looking forward to upgrading either of them, because it'll mean transferring a lot of data, reinstalling a whole mess of software, and probably a lot of cursing when things go wrong.

I like using technology. I'm not so excited about having to maintain it.

Finally, to answer the inevitable question: What do I think of the iPad? Meh. (Though it's been great for inspiring sarcastic hipster commentary.) As shown above, I don't really need yet another mobile computer right now. And especially not one that costs twice as much as my netbook did, but is only marginally more useful than my phone.

Book Report: SuperFreakonomics

I don't generally read a lot of non-fiction books, but I enjoyed Freakonomics a lot, and the follow-up, SuperFreakonomics, did not disappoint.

Unlike some writers, who like to draw lots of conclusions based on sometimes slim or anecdotal evidence (coughMalcolmGladwellcough), Levitt and Dubner love data--the more the better. Their stories concern macroeconomics--the study of complex systems with large populations--and they like to highlight "natural experiments," in which some happenstance holds certain conditions constant while varying others.

For example, they examine the effect of television on children's behavior--specifically, violent crime rates in cities which got broadcast TV at different times during the 1950s:

[D]id the introduction of TV have any discernible effect on a given city’s crime rate?

The answer seems to be yes, indeed. For every extra year a young person was exposed to TV in his first 15 years, we see a 4 percent increase in the number of property- crime arrests later in life and a 2 percent increase in violent- crime arrests. According to our analysis, the total impact of TV on crime in the 1960s was an increase of 50 percent in property crimes and 25 percent in violent crimes.

Why did TV have this dramatic effect?

Our data offer no firm answers. The effect is largest for children who had extra TV exposure from birth to age four. Since most four year-olds weren’t watching violent shows, it’s hard to argue that content was the problem...

You can read the relevant excerpt from that chapter, "Unbelievable Stories About Apathy and Altruism," online at freakonomicsbook.com.

As you can see above, the book isn't all charts and graphs, though it does include some relevant visual aids. My favorite is the mathematical expression PIMPACT > RIMPACT. You'll have to read all of chapter one to understand why that's so amusing.

And the epilogue, which recounts a totally freaky experiment involving monkeys, is unforgettable and hilarious. I first heard Levitt and Dubner tell that story when they gave a talk at my former employer in 2005, and I wish the video were online so I could share it. You'll just have to settle for reading the book.

ADDENDUM: You can read the complete monkey experiment story online in "Monkey Business" (New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2005).

Friday Flash Fiction: "Telling Tales Out of School"

I blame Robot Chicken for a lot of things, not the least of which is a tendency to say "What a twist!"--in a high-pitched voice, pronouncing the last word as tweest...

You know what? It'll be faster if you just watch the video:



I know, it still doesn't make any sense. That is the insidious nature of this program.

Read "Telling Tales Out of School" at 512 Words or Fewer

The Quarantine Has Been Lifted

That's the good news. Tye's gums are still a little red, so he'll continue to take antibiotics for a couple more weeks, but he gets to wander around the whole house now. So this is the last you'll see of the TyeCam for a while--hopefully forever. (Other cat-related videos may appear later. No promises.)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deZLFfhiWHo

The bad news is, Tye is a bit too, shall we say, forward for Jasper's taste. Tye very enthusiastically jumps on Jasper and wants to play, when Jasper would prefer to take things a little more slowly.

All things considered, this isn't a huge problem. We had always intended to keep their territories separated at first, and introduce them to each other gradually. It's just turning out to be slightly more challenging than we anticipated.