Giant Squid Creations

I finally watched John Carpenter's The Thing recently and wasn't that something. I had wanted to see it for a long time because of all the SF TV shows that did their tribute episodes. It’s a great concept and the remote locale and limited cast raise the tension in ways worldwide versions like The Host , or I presume, The Fifth Wave , can hope for as the pressure disperses. For those totally lost, the Thing is an alien that can resemble anyone it's killed. And it's in a remote Antarctic station. Anyone there could be part of the Thing and could become part of it if you lose sight of them. What makes the story work is the paranoia the situation creates. I believe that's why so many shows do their tribute episodes too. Unfortunately, I think John Carpenter's version didn't do enough with that element. The characters were paranoid no doubt but the atmosphere of the film lost its paranoia early on. The movie became a series of scenes of ye...

I just finished reading a story about an invention called the Tickler. It starts out as a joke about a mechanical reminder so you wouldn't need a secretary (it was written in the early '60s) and ends up being a telepathic hive minded robot that controls the thoughts of the entire population. Once I finished it, I opened up my laptop and this thing flashed at me at the bottom of the screen - "I'm Cortana. I can help you. Ask me anything." There's that circle next to it, white and ominous like some unblinking eye. It was eerie. It's like the time I'd recently finished reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 where the main character's wife detaches herself from reality within a TV show that has become her family. The screens are three walls of the living room, she really wants the fourth wall put in, closing the reality, putting her on the stage with the actors and letting her exit the real world. Then I turned on the TV and saw an ad for Big Brot...

It's Jules Verne's birthday so I thought I'd reminisce a little about my experiences with the works of this wonderful creative spirit. I can't remember a time when his name didn't mean something to me, that's probably a slight exaggeration but not much. Hearing about travelling with Captain Nemo in the bookshop at the beginning of The Never-ending Story became synonymous to me with adventure and the excitement you could have reading. I heard there was the man who went around the world in 80 days, and another who went to the centre of the Earth. These were thrilling concepts to my young imagination. At some point I must have seen some of the 1950s film of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and the dinosaurs and volcanic eruption stayed embedded in my imagination. (So it was very exciting when I found it on DVD in a garage sale). Despite these early impressions and the resulting desire I had to read his books, I was in my late teens before I read one. Even...

I watched Jupiter Ascending with my wife last night. When it was finished she asked me if I enjoyed it, I said I did and asked her opinion, she thought it was terrible and had ended up watching it for how bad it was. Now, we don't agree on everything and this is hardly the first movie I enjoyed that she didn't, but I realised I enjoyed it because it was in the tradition of the old pulp novels of the first half of last century, which I love. But being a fan of such pulp fiction does require you to forgive certain things other people may not. Jupiter Ascending is a Planetary Romance slipped it into an action film. Consequently, the characters don't get much depth and are rather two-dimensional, and some of the villains (Titus in particular) seem somewhat ludicrous. But the whole notion of planets being farmed by galactic mega-corporations is fun pulp SF and the plot is ripe for a serialisation in old-school Amazing or Astounding . And from that point of view it's a go...

Years ago there was a shop called Lazy Daze in Penrith. It sold second-hand CDs and books and I loved it. The owner had a terrible head for business though, whenever I bought things he'd do a rough adding up then round it down, sometimes quite a lot. I guess he hated giving change. And the stock was under-priced to start with. But he had some good stock, I got a lot of stuff from Lazy Daze. One such find was The Silkie , one of A.E Van Vogt's short novels, it cost me $2. At the time I'd buy pretty much any Van Vogt novel Lazy Daze had. I read most of them years ago, The Weapon Makers , The Moon Beast , The Voyage of the Space Beagle ... but when I tried The Silkie , for some reason I just didn't get into it. I stopped reading it not long after the prologue I think. So, I finally got around to reading the whole thing (all 156 pages). I'm not surprised the prologue put me off, for one thing there doesn't seem much point to it. We have this character who has a...

It's been far, far too long since I wrote here and I've read a lot in that time and written a fair bit too. I'll try to do some catch-up entries about some of the things I read, particularly Algernon Blackwood's short stories and a couple of trilogies I got through. The last book I finished was Across the Wall , which is a short story anthology by Garth Nix, an Australian fantasy author. I hadn't read any of his work before but I heard him in a seminar at Supanova one year and bought this volume afterward and got it signed, of course. I'm happy to say it the whole collection was delightful. The stories were a good mix but he has a distinctive style which I enjoy. They tend to action with a dark side with flashes of humour. It's also very readable and entertaining so I'll look into the Abhorsen cycle when I get a chance. Keeping on a signed at Supanova theme, I also read Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens . This was a combination fantasy and historical ...

I was just sitting here playing a game on Facebook in a time I'd specifically arranged to do some writing, and while the guilt gnawed me further into inaction so I continued to play and feel more guilty, so worse, so less likely to do something constructive I remembered one of the things I wanted to write about. That is Felicia Day's book You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) . Felicia Day is an actress known for her roles in Buffy , Supernatural and others. I saw her in Buffy , but it was when I was belatedly introduced to Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog that I first really noticed her and learnt her name. Not long after that I was, also belatedly, introduced to The Guild , which is a web series (made before such things were things) that Felicia wrote and starred in. It's hilarious and well worth watching if you haven't. From there I naturally discovered Felicia's online media company Geek and Sundry - this time just as it was launching, huzz...